The woman didn’t turn as I stood up. I scanned the ground for my sword, didn’t see it. Must have left it in the other dream.
I took a step-my leg felt fine again-and another before the woman spoke.
“Why do you want the book?” she said as she reached out and plucked a white rose from a vine running up the wall.
Degan no doubt would have come back with a witty reply of some sort; Jelem would have replied with something caustic enough to get himself kicked back into consciousness; me, I simply blurted out, “What the hell is it to you?”
The hand holding the rose made a dismissive gesture. “It would take too long to explain, and we don’t have the time.” She brought the flower to her face, then turned toward me. Suddenly, we were less than a foot apart. I almost fell over as I took a hasty step backward.
She breathed in over the rose, her eyes closed, and she smiled. “Memory always makes them sweeter,” she said wistfully. Then she tossed the flower aside and looked at me.
Up to that point, I would have called her unremarkable-plain mouth, thin nose, small forehead, with dark brown hair tousled carelessly on top. But when she lifted her lids and displayed the gold-touched jade that resided beneath them, I knew I wouldn’t be forgetting her.
“Frankly,” she said, ignoring-or perhaps, counting on-the effect her eyes had on me, “I’m impressed you’re still alive. It speaks well for you. But if you keep stumbling around as you have been, even that degan you have in tow won’t be able to save you.”
“How-” I began, but my words came out slow and muffled. The woman waved her hand impatiently, twice as fast as I knew I could move my own.
“Don’t worry about the ‘how,’ Drothe. Focus on the ‘who.’ Who else knows? Who is after you? You’re a popular boy lately, and I’m the least of the players in this game.”
I almost laughed at that last bit. You don’t step into another person’s dream without being someone-but I knew better than to argue. If she wanted me to know who she was, she’d tell me; and if not… Well, there was nothing I could do to make her.
“All right,” I said, each word sitting like softened lead in my mouth, “who wants the book? And why?”
Now it was her turn to stare, but only for a moment. Then she tilted her head back and laughed. The bells in her hair chimed in counterpoint to her mirth.
“You mean you don’t know?” she said. “You have Ioclaudia’s book, and you don’t even know what this is all about?” She met my gaze, a wide smile on her face. The smile was almost as captivating as her eyes. “Oh, this is too good.”
Ioclaudia’s book? Athel had given me the name of the author? No wonder I hadn’t been able to track her down-if the book was as old as I was starting to think, Ioclaudia had been dead for centuries.
I looked at the woman before me. Bells. And books. And then it hit me.
“Princess,” I said, sketching a deep, ironic bow.
She’d been the one outside Fedim’s shop, the one who had jingled as she walked away while I crouched in the sewer. Iron Degan was hers. Which meant I was talking with a Gray Prince. Princess. The Gray Princess.
“It’s ‘Prince,’ ” she said, sounding almost embarrassed. “And it’s nice to know you can at least figure something out.”
“What I’ve figured out,” I said, my temper rising, “is that I have Cutters, White Sashes, a couple of Blades-not to mention your pet degan-after me. But I haven’t figured out why. Now, if you think that’s amusing, you can shut this garden down and find someone else to play dream games with, because I have better things to do.”
I turned to walk out of the garden and suddenly found myself seated on a bench beside the fountain. There hadn’t been any benches in the courtyard before. The woman was sitting next to me.
“I’m sorry,” she said, looking me straight in the eye. Coming from her, the words didn’t sound so much like an apology as a simple statement of fact. “I had just figured that anyone involved this deeply would know the stakes.”
“That would be assuming I got involved in all this by choice,” I said. “Bad assumption. Enlighten me.”
A line formed between her brows as she frowned. She tilted her head to one side and stared past me. I thought I could hear a faint whisper on the air, as if the garden were speaking to her on the breeze. Then she nodded and focused on me again.
“I can’t go into details right now,” she said, “but I can warn you to be very careful about whom you ultimately give that book to.”
“What,” I said, “afraid I’ll make it harder for you to get your hands on it?”
She surrendered a wry smile. “I can’t say that’s not part of it, but it’s not my main worry. I’m more concerned abou-”
Pain erupted in my leg as the courtyard winked out of existence. I opened my eyes to see the back of a pair of boots moving beneath me. They were walking across wet and muddy cobbles. I realized by the motion I felt that I was slung over someone’s shoulder and being carried through the streets. I tried to shift my weight so I could fall and get away, tried to ask who the hell was carrying me. All I managed was a weak wobble of my head and a pathetic mumble. The person carrying me readjusted my body on his frame with a grunt. The movement sent fresh fire racing up my leg. I groaned and closed my eyes, fleeing from the pain and misery into darkness.
“… happening?!” yelled the woman. I opened my eyes to find myself on the paved floor of the courtyard, my knees up against my chest. The woman was standing beside the bench, turned toward a shadowy, halftransparent figure that had not been there before. The figure was short-even shorter than I-but I couldn’t make out any details beyond that. It gestured as if it were speaking, and I heard the whispering on the breeze again.
So, she’d contracted a Mouth to glimmer the dream for her. Good. The thought of a Gray Prince being able to walk into my dreams at will was just too much for me at the moment.
My leg still hurt, but it was not nearly as bad here. I unfolded and rolled slowly to my hands and knees. I noticed that the veins in the marble tiles seemed to shift and move of their own accord. That couldn’t be a good sign.
“How long can we keep hold of him?” asked the woman. Pause. “Well, shit.” I heard the sound of movement saw her kneel down beside me at the edge of my vision. The place didn’t smell green anymore-another bad sign, I was sure.
“Drothe,” she said. It wasn’t kind or coddling; it was a command. I looked up at her without thinking.
“Listen to me,” she said. “Whatever you do, don’t give that book to anyone.”
“Except you,” I gasped. “Right?”
She shook her head. “Not even to me. Hide it. Don’t tell anyone where it is-that’ll help keep you alive, at least for a while. I’d rather see Ioclaudia’s book lost again than in the wrong hands.”
I was about to ask what she meant when my leg spasmed. I winced, and when I opened my eyes, most of the color had washed out of our dream. The woman reached out and put her hands on my shoulders. The fingers didn’t quite stop when they touched me, seeming instead to pass an inch into my flesh. Oddly, it didn’t feel strange at that moment.
“Hide the book,” she said, blurring and fading at the edges. “And keep it hidden.”
Then I was alone in a silence that quickly turned into oblivion.
There was nothing gradual about it-no slow graying before my eyes, no buzz becoming a roar in my ears. One moment I was unconscious; the next, I was awake.
Everything was wrong. Instead of being cold, wet, and in pain, I was warm, dry, and lying in a soft feather bed. Crisp sheets covered me. My clothes were gone, replaced with what felt like a soft nightshirt. And I was alive. It was this last bit that surprised me the most.
Out of curiosity, I shifted my leg. A barely noticeable ache answered the movement. That wasn’t right, either; the pain should have nearly driven me to tears. I pushed against the mattress beneath me with my left leg, my teeth clenched in preparation for the agony that would
follow. A sharp burning answered the effort, but nothing more.
Glimmer-had to be. There was no other way I could be feeling this good.
Now I was really worried.
I kept my eyes closed and listened. The sounds of Ildrecca after dark came to me, but they weren’t the usual cacophony of screams, drunken revelers, and rutting cats I was used to. Instead, I heard night insects, fragments of rough laughter, and the light tap of fingers on a drum somewhere in the distance. Whatever cordon I was in, it wasn’t Ten Ways or the Barren, that was for certain.
I was about to roll over, when I heard cloth rustle and someone take a wet-sounding sip of something behind me. I froze, then forced myself to relax. Guard, nurse, or someone else? A glass clinked faintly as it was set down.
I took a slow, deep breath and was happy to find no hints of fresh greenery in the air around me. Still, there was something else in the air-something vaguely familiar I couldn’t quite place. Basil? Crushed thyme?
I took another breath. Yes, it was definitely coming from the sheets. And I knew only one person who scented her sheets. Christiana. And that meant the other person in the room was…
“Damn it, Degan,” I said, rolling over and opening my eyes. “Why’d you bring me here when you know I don’t like-” And I stopped.
Jelem favored me with a sly smile. “I wasn’t thrilled about having you here, either,” he said. “But once my wife saw you bleeding all over the street…” He shrugged eloquently. “Well, it’s not as if I have a say under this roof, anyhow.”
Jelem was stretched out in a well-padded chair, his feet kicked out in front of him, crossed at the ankles. His dark hair was in disarray, and the long green and black kaftan he wore was uncharacteristically rumpled. A silver oil lamp sat on a table by his side, creating shadows around the room. Next to the lamp, a glass of wine glowed red from the flame. Above him, an open window revealed a fragment of the clear night sky.
I looked around the room. No, definitely not my sister’s house. She would never stand for the plain, whitewashed walls-colored plaster was all the rage among the nobility now. Then again, she might forgive it, once she saw the woven cloths that had been hung at strategic spots around the room. Gold, green, crimson, and brilliant blue threads formed intricate arabesques and geometries, bringing color and grace to an otherwise unremarkable space.
I noted that neither my clothes nor any of the rest of my possessions were in ready sight. I turned back to Jelem to ask about them, when I noticed the battered, leather-bound book lying open in his lap. To hell with my clothes.
“Is that what I think it is?” I said.
Jelem glanced down at his lap. “This?” he said as he flicked a corner of a page. “If you mean, is this the waterlogged tome I’ve taken so many pains to dry properly, then yes, it is.”
“Put it down,” I said.
Jelem raised an eyebrow. “Excuse me?”
I ignored my muscles’ complaints as I pushed myself into a sitting position and pointed at the book. “Put it down,” I said. “Now.” Dream warning or no, I hadn’t slogged through sewers and fought White Sashes so Jelem could page through it at his leisure.
Jelem regarded me for a long moment, his expression fading from mild surprise to cool displeasure. Slowly, he closed the cover and set the book on the table.
“As you wish.” Jelem picked up the glass of wine and sank back even farther into the chair. He took a long, lingering sip and held the glass up to the lamp’s light. Then he smiled.
I knew that smile. He had something-something he’d found in the book. Something he wanted to trade for.
Fine. Let him smile. What could he have possibly found in just.. .
I looked past him to the window and the crisp, clear stars outside-stars that had been hidden behind storm clouds when I was last awake.
Oh.
“How long have I been here?” I asked.
Jelem’s smile deepened at my tone. “A night, a day, and nearly another full night. It’s almost Owl’s day, and a new week, by your reckoning.”
“Owl?” I echoed. Damn. Maybe he had gotten through enough of the book to find something after all. But what was he doing with it in the first place?
“Where’s Degan?” I asked.
“He’s been in and out-more like a worried hen than an Arm.” Jelem took another sip of wine and looked at me. “You can ask me directly, you know. It’s not as if I haven’t already been insulted.”
“Fine,” I said. “What are you doing with the book?”
Jelem nodded. “Better. Simply put, you wouldn’t let it out of your sight. You made Degan promise to leave it with you. He did.”
“And you just decided to help yourself to it?”
“No one made me promise not to.”
“I take it,” I said, “that you found something interesting in there.”
Jelem tipped his glass toward me in salute.
“And that it’s going to cost me,” I said.
Jelem set the glass on the table. “That,” he said, “is entirely up to you.” He picked up the book again. “I’m sure you’d be able to puzzle a fair amount of this out on your own, or pay someone else to do so, but that would take both time and trust. I doubt you have much of either to spare at this point.”
I didn’t bother denying it. He had me in a corner, and we both knew it.
“How much?” I said, steeling myself for what I knew was going to be a very large number.
Jelem surprised me by waving the idea away with a sweep of his hand. “Money? For this? Perish the thought. You already owe me, and besides, who am I to be greedy?” I was good; I didn’t laugh in his face at that. “No,” continued Jelem, “I was thinking of something of more immediate use.”
“Such as?”
Jelem tapped his finger on the book meaningfully.
“No,” I said. “Absolutely not. The book stays with me.”
“You misunderstand,” said Jelem. “I don’t want the book-I’m not stupid, nor do I have a death wish-but I do want to know why you’re so interested in it. You and glimmer don’t usually mix, Drothe, especially when the glimmer’s imperial, so I-”
“What?!” I said, throwing the sheets aside and swinging my feet to the floor. I stood, or at least tried to. My legs refused to bear my weight, and I only stayed upright by catching myself on the bed’s footboard.
“Oh, be careful,” said Jelem absently. “Your legs won’t be able to hold you for a while yet. The healing glimmer used up most of the strength in the surrounding muscles to speed up your recovery. It should finish replenishing itself in a day or so.”
“Thanks for the warning,” I growled, clawing my way back to my perch on the bed. I took a deep, shaking breath and let it out about as smoothly as it had come in. “Are you telling me,” I said, “that book is about Imperial magic?”
Jelem smiled lazily. “As far as I can tell, yes. And no. It-”
“What do you mean, as far as you can tell?” I said. “Either we can be executed for having that book, or we can’t. You’re the Mouth, damn it-is the stuff in there forbidden or not?”
Jelem sat up straighter in his chair and fixed me with a hard look. “I can tell you,” he said evenly, “that this book was put down in that ridiculous mixture of termite tracks and rodent droppings you Imperials call writing; I can tell you that it’s in a different dialect than you use today; and I can tell you that an imperial Paragon named Ioclaudia Neph wrote the book, mainly because she was kind enough to sign it. What I cannot tell you is what exactly Ioclaudia wrote about, because someone woke up in a foul mood and told me to put the book aside before I could finish.”
“But if an imperial Paragon wrote it, what else would it be about?” I said. Paragons were a select cadre of imperial magicians. By decree, they were the only ones allowed to work with Imperial magic.
“Not having finished it, I’d rather not hazard a guess.”
I stared at Jelem and his smug smile for a long moment. Th
e bastard knew more than he was letting on, and he wanted me to know it.
“All right,” I said. “So if you don’t want a book that may or may not be about Imperial magic, what do you want?”
“I already told you.”
“Yes, but how does knowing why I want the book help you?” I said.
“Simple,” said Jelem. “If I know why you’re interested in it, I will know why others are after it. Kin and Imperial magic don’t often cross paths-having that happen, and being involved in it, puts me in a rare position.”
“You mean it’ll give you leverage with whoever has the book in the end, be they criminal or imperial.”
Jelem shrugged. “Something like that, yes. I’ve found that leverage is never a bad thing to have.”
“That could be a hell of a dangerous lever,” I said.
“A tool is only as dangerous as the man who uses it.”
I leaned back into my pillow and considered. The offer made sense from Jelem’s point of view; the more he knew, the more he could parlay it into an advantage. And, given the hints he’d just dropped, he had a fair start on the book’s contents already. But that didn’t help him unless he knew whom to play-or avoid-down the line.
As for my end-well, there was a hell of a lot to tell. What had started separately as a cleanup job and a hunt for a missing relic had become a twisted mass involving my sister, assassins, Gray Princes, a Kin war, White Sashes, and now, apparently, a long-dead Paragon and her notes on Imperial magic. I knew I could run most of it by Jelem without betraying either Kells or Degan, but that didn’t mean I had to like it.
As a Nose, my instinct was to keep things close until I had them figured out. Except, in this case, I wouldn’t live long enough to do that unless I found out what I had.
Besides, I wanted to know exactly what all the fuss was about.
“Got any seed?” I asked.
Jelem reached into one of his sleeves and tossed me a pouch. I emptied two of the dark orbs into my palm, rolled them there briefly with my fingertips, and then took them into my mouth. They were superb.
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