Magic Below Paris Complete Series Boxed Set (Books 1 - 8): Trading Into Shadow, Trading Into Darkness, Trading Close to Light, Trading By Firelight, Trading by Shroomlight, plus 3 more

by C. M. Simpson

  Marsh tried to shrug, winced, and lay still.

  “I had a fight with a couple of raiders. It happens.”

  The medic pursed his lips.

  “You’ll need to take that shirt off so I can inspect your bruises.”

  Marsh stilled, studying his face.

  “They’re on your back,” he added, keeping his expression perfectly solemn, “and I can’t see through cloth.”

  “Sorry, Doc.”

  Marsh got up and let the medic check her. When he was done, and she was dressed and back in bed, Brigitte brought her something to eat and a cup of chocolate.

  “You’re to sleep,” she said. “We’ll be back to check on you before dinner. If you’re up to it then, you can come to the dining hall and see the kids.”

  Marsh nodded, looking at Brigitte over the rim of her cup as she drained her chocolate.

  “Thank you,” she said, and let the journeyman settle her under her covers.

  “I’ll be back to collect you,” Brigitte told her, and her tone of voice suggested Marsh had better be there.

  Why wouldn’t I be? Marsh thought, feeling tiredness gnawing the edges of her mind. She closed her eyes, as the woman left the room and pulled the door closed behind her. Beside her, Mordan huffed out a sigh.

  “We’ll get your cubs,” Marsh murmured as she drifted into sleep.

  She woke later to silence and the sense of something being terribly wrong. Taking a breath and holding it, Marsh listened, but heard nothing, either inside the room or from outside it. Beside her, Mordan lifted her head and hopped down from the bed.

  Marsh watched the big kat’s bulk pass over her and slowly sat up.

  “What is it, girl?”

  The kat gave a soft rippling snarl and turned toward the door. Marsh heard nothing and tweaked at the threads of shadow around her. To her surprise only a few answered, and these showed her that the corridor outside was empty.

  So much for Roeglin’s threat of putting a guard on her, she thought, then wondered why the shadow mage thought he’d need to. It took her a moment to remember why, and she drew more pictures from the shadows stretching beneath the door.

  There really was no one guarding her door—and she sincerely doubted that Monsieur Gravine was going to send anyone after Madame Monetti, given just how busy he was setting up defenses for the rest of the cavern. She looked at the hoshkat.

  “I guess that leaves just you and me,” she said, and the big kat lifted her head toward her with a silent, approving hiss.

  “Do you think we have enough time to get away before they send someone to fetch me for dinner?”

  Mordan flicked her tail and butted her head against the door.

  “Good point,” Marsh told her. “We’ll have no time if I don’t get my arse in gear.”

  She dressed as swiftly as the all-pervading stiffness of her injuries would allow and was grateful nothing had cut flesh in the last battle. If that had happened, she wouldn’t be attempting to go anywhere. As it was, she was probably being stupid for attempting to leave.

  Well, too bad.

  Marsh pulled her armor around her, doing her best to check the buckles and straps before settling her sword belt around her hips and lifting her pack from the floor. She hissed in pain and took a moment to let her body’s protests subside. Maybe the doc had something for that…except the only thing he was likely to give her was a stern lecture and orders to go back to bed.

  “No time,” she muttered, sliding her arms through the pack’s straps and turning to the door.

  Resting her fingers on the handle, she took a moment to ask the shadows to show her the corridor again. This time, she had to wait while two soldiers passed, watching as they took the stairs to the next level.

  “Best hurry,” she told the kat and woke the link between them, sending a desire for open gates and the shroom-forested cavern beyond.

  Mordan nudged her hand and walked to the door. She knew the way, but she didn’t have hands and wasn’t strong enough to knock the door down by herself. Marsh solved that by turning the handle, feeling the kat’s envy of her fingers and thumbs as they stepped into the corridor.

  Marsh stopped long enough to pull the door closed behind them, and then they hurried down the hallway toward the stairwell. On the way, Marsh had to twice duck through doorways and wait for people to pass. At one point, she thought she heard Tamlin and Aisha in animated conversation with Brigitte—something to do with cookies and which ones Marsh liked best.

  As a way of distracting the children, Marsh had to admit it was a pretty good option. It was also a great way to make her feel as guilty as sin for what she was about to do. It was bad enough having Roeglin and Monsieur Gravine angry with her without Aisha, Brigitte, and Tamlin being upset, too.

  “Come on, Dan, before I change my mind and do the sensible thing.”

  The two of them hurried down two flights of stairs, passing through the kitchens amidst the hustle and bustle of what had to be pre-dinner preparations. Marsh hoped no one recognized her. If they did, she was toast, but despite her fears, they reached the stable yard without being called back.

  Marsh was just about to turn toward the outer gate she remembered when the hoshkat surprised her by heading away from it. At first, Marsh wondered why, but the kat moved with swift certainty and she decided not to question her judgment. After taking a cautious path around the stables and a storage shed, Mordan led her to an open drain.

  “You have got to be shitting me,” Marsh protested, and the kat gave her a blue-eyed look tinged with scorn. Marsh sighed. “You’re not kidding.”

  She glanced back, catching a glimpse of two guards heading toward the gate in the wall and moving a lot quicker than she’d like.

  “Drain it is,” she told the kat, and slid carefully into the culvert. “We’re both going to need a bath after this.”

  Mordan said nothing, but judging by the way the kat lifted her feet, she wasn’t overly impressed with the route she had chosen either. Marsh refrained from arguing, relieved when they emerged on the other side of the wall. She was even more relieved to discover herself in the middle of a tangle of hanging moss, tall callas, and tightly clustered shrooms grounded by ditch mint and grackle thorn.

  At least they wouldn’t be seen. Not yet, anyway. Marsh followed Mordanlenoowar to the edge of the clustered plants and fungi and peered out, searching for heat and light in the shadows nearest the wall. It took her a moment to pinpoint the gate she’d used before, and she realized the cavern founder had learned from her previous outing.

  For a long moment, she watched as a team of masons worked to build a small barbican around the gate, and she wondered why they weren’t waiting for the rock wizards to assist them. It was something she’d ask about, later—after she’d returned from her confrontation with Madame Monetti.

  “Let’s go, girl,” she said. “You know where we need to be.”

  And so did she, she realized. She knew exactly where to go, thanks to the maps Roeglin had shared with her noting the farms’ locations. Taking a moment to bring them to memory, Marsh oriented them in her mind, using what she knew of the cavern and the farms as a guide. The dot at the edge of the map, the one closest to the Leon’s Deep junction, had to be where Madame Monetti had built her mansion.

  It was, after all, the only marker where Monsieur Gravine had said the woman lived, and Marsh could reach it if she asked the shadows to show her the way, just like she had when she had gone after the shadow mage at their first campsite on the way to Ruins Hall. One minute she’d had a hundred yards or more to cover, and the next she’d stepped into the shadows, asking them to speed her path, and she’d been beside him.

  “Sorry, girl,” she said to the hoshkat, “but this is where we part ways.”

  Refusing to think about the wisdom of going to confront Madame Monetti without any form of backup, Marsh stepped out of the grove, fixing the map in her mind. Another step took her into the dimly-lit shadows of a clump o
f callas and she spoke to them, thinking of the distance she had to cover and the point on the map she had reach.

  “I need to be there,” she told the shadows, highlighting the marker and picturing the location she remembered from her arrival with Fabrice. Becoming one with the shadows, she began to run.

  To her surprise, the pain of her bruises faded with the weight of her body and pack and movement became as easy as selecting the next section of shadow. Marsh wished she could go faster; she wished she could step through the shadow and find herself at the edge of the first farm, and then the second, and then at that point on the map. That one—the one near the junction.

  She needed to be there; needed it badly.

  The shadows blurred around her, her surroundings pivoting at a dizzying rate. Where she’d been skipping from the shadows beneath a grove of calla shrooms to the darkness at the edge of a stalagmite or rocky outcrop, now she slid through the cavern’s perpetual night, the walls of the first farmhouse she’d visited the night before looming before her.

  Marsh gasped, only to have the walls fade until she stood outside the barn of the second farm she’d visited, and then, almost too fast to register, the scenery shifted once again and Marsh stood where two roads met, their glows dark, the shadows crowding close on either side. Somewhere, in the distance, she heard a hoshkat roar with frustration.

  “Sorry, Mordan,” she whispered, stepping into the deeper shadows surrounding the base of a jumble of rocks.

  Letting herself drift out of shadow form, she thanked the cavern dark for the speed of her journey and wished she’d remembered to pack something to eat. Her head spun and she felt a little weak, but she knew where she was. She remembered passing through the junction with a herd of moutons and a string of mules that hadn’t belonged to her.

  That seemed so long ago. It was hard to believe it had only been a few weeks, and only a few weeks more since she had been a courier for Kearick’s Emporium in Kerrenin’s Ledge. It had been even less time since her employer had sent Mikel to retrieve her commission and kill her. Anger surged through her and Marsh caught hold of it, harnessing her outrage and using it to give her energy.

  Time to find out what Madame Monetti’s role was in this entire debacle had been.

  Marsh!

  Marsh didn’t have time for Roeglin’s fury…or the anxious undertones she heard in that single word. She set him firmly to one side of her mind and focused on the cavern around her. The junction she was familiar with, but she knew there had to be another road—one that would take her to Madame Monetti’s mansion.

  Marsh!

  Shut up, Ro. I need to concentrate.

  You need to get your ass right back—

  Marsh shut him out. Man couldn’t be quiet? Man wasn’t going to be allowed inside her head. And he thought he was such a mental magic titan…

  It took her a moment to find it, but the trail was there. Marsh stepped out onto the trade route and walked back to where two tall white pillars stretched from floor to ceiling. At first glance, they looked like a squared-off stalagmite had finally met the matching stalactite reaching down from above, but on closer inspection, Marsh would have sworn the pillars had always been one, and that they belonged to something man-made; an older structure that had sent roots deep into the earth hundreds of years ago.

  Roeglin’s next intrusion, when it came, arrived as a polite knock on the edge of her mind. Marsh sighed and cracked the barrier.

  What?

  Mind if I come along for the ride?

  Marsh thought about it.

  I’ve found it.

  Roeglin was silent for a moment, and Marsh got the impression he was trying to catch a glimpse of what she was seeing.

  Fine, she told him. You can watch, but not one word. You can’t stop me.

  This time Roeglin sighed. It was a sound of such utter despondency that Marsh almost felt sorry for him.

  Since when have I ever been able to do that?

  Almost.

  Point, she agreed and went back to the trail.

  Having worked out that the pillars were quite solid regardless of their origin, Marsh stepped between them and followed the trail beyond. After several feet, it widened into an open expanse of white rock on which nothing grew. More pillars rose around its edges, but these did not reach the ceiling, forming a kind of ragged fringe instead.

  Roeglin stayed silent and still, and Marsh soon forgot he was traveling with her, albeit only in her mind. She crossed the expanse of white flooring and entered another narrow section of trail.

  I don’t like this, Roeglin muttered.

  Too bad. We’re here. Marsh told him as the trail ended in front of two pristine white doors.

  Wait for me.

  He was begging.

  Can’t.

  Not when she was already at the doors.

  Marsh raised her hand and lifted the heavy golden knocker, using it to send booming echoes through whatever lay beyond the doors. When they opened to reveal two lines of shadow mages, she realized she might just have made another mistake. To give him credit, Roeglin didn’t waste time rubbing it in or scolding her.

  I’m coming, he said, and Marsh swallowed hard as she took in the towering dark-cloaked figures. She swallowed again when an equally tall man in the armor of the raiders stepped out from behind them and stalked toward her.

  He was flanked by two others, both wearing the same armor, the same insignia, and the same curving weapons she’d last seen being carried through Leon’s Deep when she’d asked the shadows to show her what was coming. Marsh felt her skin grow cool as she paled, but the man didn’t seem to notice.

  “State your business!” he ordered and Marsh cleared her throat, forcing herself to look at him. She tried not to glance nervously at the guards and mages on either side.

  “I have a delivery for Madame Monetti,” she said, then added, “From Kearick of Kerrenin’s Ledge.”

  It was a bold statement to make, considering the only things she carried in her pack were whatever was left from her journey from the shadow-mage monastery. She really didn’t need to hear the new voice that echoed down from the other end of the hall.

  “She lies!”

  It was not a voice she recognized, although the tale it told was a scenario she herself had run by Roeglin.

  “I waited for Mikel and saw his body buried outside the monastery walls.”

  Marsh backed up a step and turned to leave, but it was already too late. Her heart plummeted at the sight before her. Four shadow mages were slowly pulling themselves from the shadows and returning to human form. Well, merde! She’d thought she was one of a very few folks to be able to work that trick.

  They also knew the trick of using shadow weapons mixed with real in case their target could also shift form. She could tell that from the darts and crossbows they held. If they were even half-way proficient, she was done for.

  “Well, merde,” she murmured, out loud this time, and the warrior who had met her gave a bark of laughter.

  “Come with me,” he said. “Madame Monetti will want to speak with you.”

  Marsh turned side-on so she could see him, then stood very still as two of the shadow mages approached. The others were still pointing lethal weapons in her direction, and she wanted to live—at least for a little while longer.

  I’m coming, Roeglin repeated, and Marsh could think of only one reply.

  Hurry.

  14

  Madame Monetti

  Once they’d taken her weapons, gagged her, and bound her hands, Marsh was led into a plush office lined with display cases filled with teapots. Some looked like they’d been bought recently from local sources, but others…Marsh stared. They looked really old, and not just because they were dented or missing a handle. No, there was something about their designs that felt unfamiliar.

  Why teapots? she wondered, tripping over the edge of a mottled gray-and-brown rug. It dragged her attention back to the present, and she swallowed a f
eeling of revulsion. The rug looked like someone had skinned a hoshkat and laid it on the floor. Seeing the head still attached made her stomach roll, and she willed it to be calm.

  Marsh shivered, glad Mordan hadn’t come with her. She’d have hated to see her friend decorating the floor in another part of the office. She stumbled and was jerked upright by the shadow mage walking to her right.

  “Watch where you’re going,” he snapped, giving her a none-too-gentle shake.

  Marsh wanted to tell him to watch where he was going, himself, except that it would have been childish…and she wouldn’t have gotten the words past the cloth covering her mouth. She also wanted to take her sword and run it through his middle, but this wasn’t possible either, given that her hands were bound and her sword had been taken and handed to someone else for safekeeping. It wasn’t’ safe to try to pull a shadow blade here.

  This was not how Marsh had envisioned meeting Madame Monetti, but she drew a deep breath and kept moving forward. At least she would be seeing the lady. For a long moment, she hadn’t been sure she’d live to make it through the door. Some of the mages had wanted revenge for fallen comrades.

  Some of the soldiers, too. Apparently, they’d had brothers and friends out on those raids. The gag had been their leader’s decision when she’d told one man his brother might have lived if he hadn’t been picking on little children and had been gutted like the pig he was. There was a good reason that man was still outside guarding the door.

  Marsh started smirking.

  If Roeglin hadn’t been so busy trying to catch up with her, he would have been appalled…but only if she let him into her head, again. It was almost fun being able to keep him out at will. She’d have to ask him how that worked. Mirth bubbled up inside her, followed by an instant of crushing despair. She would tell him if she ever got the chance. For all she knew, this could be the last room she’d ever see.

  Sucking in another breath to steady her pitching emotions, Marsh focused on putting one foot in front of the other and concentrated, trying to calm her mind. She really couldn’t afford to offend Madame Monetti like she’d offended the guard outside, not if she wanted to discover what happened to the people they took.