Scott J Couturier - [The Magistricide 01]

by The Mask of Tamrel (epub)

  11: The Flight Inwards

  Kelrob was on him in a moment, tugging at the big man’s nerveless limbs. “Jacobson!” he cried out, tears clouding his eyes; he blinked them aside angrily. Shoving at Jacobson’s considerable bulk he rolled the mercenary onto his side, the mask a lifeless ornament smiling through tangles of dirty-gold hair.

  Suddenly Jacobson’s eyes flew open. They were completely his, faded human blue shot with veins and shaded with a heavy weariness. “I heard it all,” he said.

  Kelrob bit back a cry of joy. He helped the big man to sit up, his hands accidentally brushing against the lute strings and producing a noisome twang. “Can you move?” he asked. “Tamrel said you would experience some disorientation.”

  “With all due respect to my infestor, I’ve lived in this skin longer than he has.” Jacobson brushed aside Kelrob’s fluttering hands and struggled to his feet, swaying unsteadily. “Though I could use a moment,” he admitted, bracing himself against the bedpost.

  Kelrob bent to gathering their few belongings and stuffing them into packs. He said nothing to Jacobson, and Jacobson said nothing to him. The big man gathered his strength, then slid the lute from around his shoulders. Without a word he cast it into the cold hearth, body and neck splintering discordantly. “Ashes to fucking ashes,” Jacobson said, spitting on the vibrating remains.

  Kelrob shouldered both their packs and nodded to the door. “Can you make it?”

  “Aye. I’ve got my sea legs back now.” Reaching under the bed, Jacobson retrieved his sword and strapped it around his waist. At Kelrob’s severe glance, he said, “We might meet some ugly things in the streets. Where are we bound?”

  “To the house of Lord Azumana.”

  Jacobson sucked in a tight breath. “The dwelling of a merchant-lord? Might not be the safest place, under the circumstances. I thought you said you could spring us from the city entire.”

  So he had heard it all, every word. Kelrob shuddered and made an impatient slashing gesture with his hand. “No time to explain. Just follow me.” With a final glance at the sputtering ice-box he went to the door and threw it wide. The outer panel was stained with blood from the porter’s frantic knocking.

  They took the stairs down, Kelrob not trusting the elevator under the circumstances. The ripple of an explosion shook the tower as they reached the lobby, resplendent with potted plants and gilded furnishings and utterly devoid of human life. Jacobson stayed Kelrob from rushing out into the street; drawing his sword, he pushed through the revolving glass doors and poked out his head. Claxons were sounding shrilly, oily smoke curling on the air; after a few moments he motioned Kelrob through, masked face smiling, and together they struck for the heart of the city. The mage felt strong misgivings about abandoning his poor, nervous mount in the hostelry stables, but Jacobson assuaged him, pointing out that the uppity creature was ill-suited to their current environment. “Besides,” he said, hefting his sword, “she’s safer there than with us.”

  The streets were crowded. People huddled outside of brightly-colored shop-fronts or peered from upstairs windows, their eyes and pointing fingers leaping from one plume of smoke to the next. Women wept together in tight clusters, children ran from alleyway to alleyway in shrieking hordes; carts lay abandoned mid-street, some still tethered to their mounts, who frothed and pitched against their halters. Men in the tabards of the garrison darted about in disarray, some clearly just awoken from their shift-sleep, others nursing newly-inflicted wounds. One, haunted-eyed and bleeding from a wide gash in his scalp, challenged Kelrob and Jacobson to stand down and surrender their weapons; Jacobson brandished his blade and loudly barked for him to go to hell. The sight of a towering armed man wearing an inscrutable bone-white mask was apparently too much for the gendarme, who fell back with a snarled curse. They continued unhindered, keeping from the main thoroughfares, gradually worming their way towards the belching fume of the consulate’s ruin. The air stank of spent powder and blood, with a biting undercurrent of ozone that Kelrob attributed to the oxidizing influence of the siege-dome. The mage covered his mouth and suppressed a cough, the twin packs weighing heavily on his back. His body screamed with fearful exhaustion, but he could still feel the lingering palliative of Tamrel’s song in his marrow, giving him the strength to match Jacobson’s pace.

  The big man moved like a whip-crack, his mettle clearly galvanized by the stink of war. Occasionally they would halt at a crossroads, and Kelrob would choose the best path, drawing on an extensive knowledge of the city he could barely believe he possessed. He had never strode the streets of Tannigal unescorted, always moving about with his father’s train, but business had often brought them to this quarter of the city. Now without the aid of friendly, subservient guides, he picked out street names from foggy memory, bringing the two of them at length and by a circuitous route to the brink of the smoldering square. The white cobbles stretched down to a fuming pit wherein brooded the skeletal remnants of the Isdori consulate. A cluster of gendarmes were mustering on the expanse, the crimson plumes of their helms bobbing ludicrously in the foul wind blasting from the pit.

  Jacobson choked and covered the mask’s nostril-slits. “What a stench,” he said. “I’ve picked over week-old battlefields with lesser bouquets.”

  Kelrob nodded, fingers pinching his nose shut against the commingled reek of roasted flesh, burning rubber polymers, and sundered magic. He imagined the bodies of his brethren smoldering amid the ruins, adepts alongside archmagisters, all reduced to homogenous puddles of flesh and blackened bones. The thought left him strangely cold. “Can we make it across?” he asked nasally, nodding towards the ranks of soldiers. “They look testy.”

  Jacobson counted the gendarmes, easing back into the shadows of the alley. “They do indeed. Better to go around, come in from a different angle.”

  “We can’t. See that wall? It encircles the Entitled Lands. The only entrance is beyond the consulate, through a set of iron gates.”

  “Which is kept under constant guard, of course. Wish you still had that silly ring of yours.”

  An idea sparked in Kelrob’s mind, one that was truly breathtaking in its audacity. “One moment,” he said, sliding the packs from his shoulders. Quickly he probed several of the concealed pockets lining his robes, retrieving a small phial of blue-gray powder and a turquoise ring that had once belonged to his maternal grandfather. Under Jacobson’s puzzled scrutiny he unstopped the phial and dusted the ring with powder, then slid it onto his accustomed finger.

  A sizzling globe of azure light burst over the city. Jacobson drew in a hiss of breath as the flare sputtered beneath the siege-dome, fixing itself like a new star in the jaundiced firmament. “I’ve seen that before,” he said, shielding his eyes as a second flare rose from an opposing quarter of the city. “In the Ilarks. Magisters marking their positions.”

  Kelrob nodded, smiling crookedly. “So they’re not all dead.” He resisted the urge to drop everything and head for the nearest flare, where his brethren would be congregating. Without his chromox he could be of no help to them; besides, he had no doubt that Tamrel would make good his threat should their newly-forged deal be so hastily and sloppily broken. With luck there would come a moment when he could slip away and apprise the Order of Tamrel’s existence, but until then he must act bound by the troth of the quest.

  Jacobson glanced down at the blue-dusted ring on Kelrob’s finger. “Flashpowder,” he said suddenly. “A counterfeit. You’re mad.”

  Kelrob’s crooked smile widened. He closed his fist and bared the ring, the powder glowing with a faint luminescence. “A pyrotechnic composite of my own making. It’s a combination of aluminum, sulfur, and potassium nitrate, infused with particles of agate and indigo dye.” Reaching into yet another cunning pocket, he withdrew a small firesteel equipped with a sliding shard of chert. This he concealed in the palm of his left hand. “Ready?”

  Jacobson rai
sed an arm, held him back. “If they mark us, we’re dead on the spot. And I’ve seldom been less inconspicuous.” Raising the tip of his sword, he tapped it against the mask’s forehead. “Suppose they have a description of me? No, lad. Best you go on yourself.”

  “Just keep your head down. I’m not leaving you.” Either of you.

  Jacobson blew out a frustrated sigh. “Then give me a moment to work a little slight-of-hand of my own.” He tore a strip from his tunic as he spoke; pricking his finger, he stained the fabric with fresh blood and lashed it about his head like a bandage. He then smeared the cheeks and chin of the mask with further gore, lengthening his self-inflicted wound when it began to heal preternaturally. “There,” he said at last, tightening the bandage. The illusion was disconcertingly complete: Jacobson looked grievously wounded. Even the bone-pallor of the mask fit the part.

  Together they marched into the square, Kelrob leading, false ring extended and chin held high with a pomp copied from Salinas. He wished he had a full beard, or an extra foot of height, anything to emphasize this simulacrum of grandeur; his hands were slick with sweat, and he almost dropped the firesteel. Jacobson staggered behind him, clutching his face with one hand and making faint moaning noises. His sword was still naked in his hand, but he allowed it to drag along the cobblestones, the steel grating with each wobbled step.

  The garrison took notice of them immediately. They were, as Kelrob had observed, testy — an entire detachment broke free from the marshaling columns and confronted the pair with leveled pikes and drawn swords. Kelrob held up the false ring as the cluster of weapons prickled in his face. Behind him he heard Jacobson’s sword clatter dramatically to the cobbles.

  A young ashen-faced sergeant, his rank delineated by a crimson tabard and the frills dangling from his plate-clad shoulders, pushed through his men and eyed the pair with extreme suspicion. “Who are you?” he barked, drawing his sword and stabbing it in Kelrob’s direction. “Speak quickly, or I’ll have you in irons.”

  Kelrob raised the ring and his chin accordingly. “My name is Kelrob Kael-Pellin,” he said briskly, “magister of the 16th Circle. This is my bodyguard, Jacobson. We are staying with Lord Azumana, merchant and respected counselman of this fair city. I need to reach his household. Take me there immediately.”

  The sergeant squinted at the false ring. Kelrob was alarmed to see that some of the flashpowder had flaked off, staining his fingers. His hand tightened on the firesteel, waiting for the proper moment to enact his ultimate charlatanism.

  The sergeant beckoned his men to lower their weapons, his mouth chewing furiously. Spitting, he stained the cobbles with a brackish blob of tabac. “You have papers?” he asked, his eyes still bright with suspicion.

  Kelrob shook his head. “Taken. We were brokering a deal with a spice merchant — Beladier, you might know his name, he runs a shop on West Acadian Street — when the first explosions went off. The shop was damaged, and we were forced to crawl from the wreckage.” Kelrob motioned down to his dirt-and-soot stained robes, which several days of harsh travel and misadventure had propitiously worn into a state of corroboration with his claim. “My servant was badly injured, as you can see. I command you to take us to the gates.”

  “He’s lying!” cried one of the soldiers, jabbing forward with his pike. “Skewer ‘em!”

  The sergeant shouted a curse at the man, shoving aside the pole of his weapon. “Stand down, all of you,” he bellowed. Turning back to Kelrob, he spat again and said, “I’ll have to take you to my superior. Come along, and make no sudden moves.”

  Kelrob allowed his eyes to flare. “How dare you,” he snarled, raising his ring and instinctively attempting to flush it with his will. “I am a magister, an agent of the Gyre Itself. If you choose to obstruct me I will see to it that you and all your men are stripped of your city-status. You will be cast out into the countryside, forced to spend the last of your days scratching wheat out of the dirt. Now see me through the gates.”

  “Please, sir,” Jacobson moaned through his bandages. “I need to lay down.”

  The sergeant’s teeth bared in a tobacco-stained grimace. “Let me have a close look at that ring,” he said, moving forward.

  The time was come. Kelrob brought his hands together, grating the chert against the cold iron firesteel. A spray of discreet sparks leaped from the metal to the dusted ring. For a moment nothing happened, and Kelrob feared his plan had hideously backfired. But no, no — there was a quick sizzle, followed by a brilliant azure flare. The soldiers gasped and fell back; several dropped their weapons to the cobblestones. The sergeant shielded his eyes and scrabbled backwards, falling onto his backside with a harsh jangle of armor.

  The flash lingered in the air for a moment before boiling away. Kelrob lowered his hand immediately, ignoring the blisters raising on his finger. “You have one last chance, sergeant. Take me to the gates, or I will obliterate your entire platoon for obstructing official Isdori business.”

  The sergeant pushed himself warily to his feet. Then, motioning for his men to do likewise, he bowed. “Please forgive us, my lord. There are strange powers abroad in the city. Come this way; I’ll take you to the gates myself.”

  Kelrob nearly passed out with relief. Instead he sneered, tossing his black-brown hair in a semblance of disdain. “Very well, but make it quick. I will brook no more delays.”

  The sergeant was as good as his word. Taking a small detachment of men, he hurried Kelrob and a hideously limping Jacobson past the mustered lines, more than one soot-stained soldier casting them a leery glance. They neared the pit, the smoldering tomb; shards of spell-tinted glass crunched beneath Kelrob’s boots. He kept his gaze averted from the consulate’s ruin, glimpsing only a skeleton of distorted metal beams from the corner of his eye. The false ring burned on his finger, the flesh already swelling around it, but he kept his pace steady and his brow unwrinkled by pain. Amongst his more ephemeral studies at the Rookery, he had taken several classes focusing on the proper deportment of a magister in public, lessons which had bored and perplexed him at turns. Coming from a peaceful rural district in the laird-lands, he had been considered something of a gifted bumpkin by his Masters, quick at comprehension but woefully incapable of acting with the dignity prescribed by his newfound station. He had learned to walk with a stack of books tottering on his head, learned (haltingly) all the steps of the most fashionable noble dances, been painstakingly instructed on the proper use of dining utensils and the acceptable mannerisms he was to adopt around his inferiors: all of it had slid through his mind like broth through a slotted spoon. Only now, locked into a laughable scenario of pretending to be what he was, did the lessons emerge from the depths of Kelrob’s mind. He walked with brittle, imperious steps, inclining his chin until his eyes locked on the uppermost branches of the evergreens rising over the high gray wall, looking (he hoped) every bit the impatient and domineering magister. Jacobson, staggering behind him, maintained a drastically different but equally convincing facade, even stumbling twice to the ground and allowing himself to be helped up by grudging soldiers.

  They passed the sunken perimeter of the consulate, and Kelrob spared one direct glance into the pit, hideous curiosity overcoming him. Fires burned amid the spindles of melted steel, bits of bodies lay in charred heaps. Lancets of disrupted spellwork spit and sizzled amid the ruin, though Kelrob was relieved to see that their mutating influence was contained by the lip of the wreckage, where the cobblestones had melted into a filmy glass. He wondered how the maddened men of the garrison had managed to plant bombs beneath the building, which, like all Isdori installations, was protected by wards of a highly advanced nature. Those same spells should have protected the structure from being so rudely felled, but nothing on this day was as it seemed or should have been. Kelrob could only hope that the spells protecting the Entitled Lands still held; no plumes of smoke rose from beyond the high wall, and the groves appeared whole, wa
vering in the soot-choked air.

  At last the gates hove into view from behind the fuming wreckage. Kelrob resisted the urge to quicken his pace, his heart thudding in relief at the sight of the sturdy iron lattice, seemingly intact and manned by a cluster of House-guards dressed in black tunics and trousers embellished with the varicolored piping of their allegiances. He had passed through those gates a hundred times, always taken their silent respectful parting for granted. Now he wondered if the men in black, hirelings of the Great Houses that operated outside of garrison jurisdiction, would bar his passage, perhaps demand a second display of power/powder that he was ill-prepared to provide. Fear tingled along his spine, blood beat in his blackened finger; Kelrob almost burst out into hysterical laughter, but buried the impulse beneath a renewed imperious sheen. There would be plenty of time for a breakdown behind closed doors, preferably with a cup of strong stomach-souring wine in his hand.

  They stopped before the gates, which were high and arched and wrought from menacing black iron. The metal was fantastically cast, spirals and crests and menacing daggerlike protrusions, decorations which did little to disguise that the gate was not only functional, but siegeworthy. It was framed by two towers of artfully moss-cloaked stone, their nests staffed to bursting with black-clad bodies and the hovering muzzles of pistol and sling-gun. The sergeant called up to the men, and they shouted back something coarse, unintelligible. After a few moments a contingent of House-guards emerged from the lefthand tower and approached the group, naked swords held in their hands. Kelrob drew in a deep, smoke-contaminated breath, then cast Jacobson a quick glance. The large man was slumped down on one knee, holding himself theatrically erect with the blade of his weapon. His face, the mage was excessively grateful to note, was downcast, lost behind a crust of drying blood.