“You’ve known this was coming. I’m sure you’ve prepared the Girdle appropriately.”
“Oh, aye, we’ve turned our homes and shops into a slaughter yard, and we’re waiting for the stock to arrive. I don’t give them good odds of finishing us quickly, if it comes to house-to-house fighting. But I’d rather not see my parlor turned into an abattoir, if you take my meaning.”
“Well who would?”
“Right, I’m glad you agree. So when the trumpets sound, and When’s troops are engaged along the barricades, we’re going to give them a nasty shock. I’ve got armsmen and women pouring into the Citadel, coming from the Girdle and up that long set of stairs down in your basement, and when the time is right, we’re going to fall on them from behind and hack them to pieces.”
“Which leaves me and mine where, exactly?”
She was silent for a moment. Then, “In the way.”
And there it was. She didn’t dare let me go, even after she’d got what she wanted. No one holds a grudge like a mage. She thought I’d come for her, and she was right.
“I did tell you not to return to the Girdle,” she continued. “This isn’t personal. I don’t hate you like I hate the gentry.”
“But I’ll end up just as dead.” Except I wouldn’t. Because I still had the silver amulet Steyner’s assassin had used.
“Aye.”
“Would large amounts of money help to change your mind?” I asked, questing blindly for the pocket the amulet rested in. Which sounds easy enough, but is in fact somewhat difficult when you can’t see and all your other senses tell you are falling from an endless height.
“You want to bribe me with money I already have possession of?”
“You have possession of four casques. Not what they supposedly contain.” I rarely lie, because I rarely have need to. I was sure she hadn’t yet been able to open them. My hand finally found the pocket it sought, and I drove it in.
“You expect me t—”
As soon as my bare flesh made contact with the magical sink, her voice and her magic were cut off instantly.
I was still in bed. I was alone on the second floor. Downstairs I heard Gammond curse. I realized two things at once: That I had more or less trapped myself, and that, if Keel and the others were still alive, they had just become hostages.
It was still better than whatever Gammond had had planned for me.
I couldn’t stay cut off from my well indefinitely. She had troops down there, lots of them by the sound of it, and without magic I’d fall to a sword or an arrow sooner rather than later. I’d broken her hold on me, and hopefully made her cautious. That was about the extent of the amulet’s usefulness.
Two choices lay open to me now: try to escape the Citadel, or fight to take it back.
I’ve never been terribly good at running. Not because I’m particularly brave. I’m not. But I am stubborn and possessive. In certain situations the difference is negligible.
And so I dropped the amulet in my pocket and put into effect what little I had learned of Gosland battle magic from my reluctant father. What I lacked in experience, I tried to make up for with sheer force.
Confusion. An enemy confused is an enemy defeated. I put my hands on the floor and willed the magic through my palms, to flood the lower levels. I heard it pour down on them, men swearing in annoyance, dropping weapons, crashing into each other. When I felt Gammond begin to counter, I switched abruptly.
Distraction. I dropped the Citadel’s now-useless wards and, with a painful mental shove, forced the main door open. I threw in a hellish howling for good measure. I doubted When’s troops would take the invitation and come rushing in, but that wasn’t the point. The point was what came next.
Panic. I was intimate with pain. I shared that intimacy with everyone below. By shared, I mean I projected it downstairs, whether they liked it or not. I summoned up a perfect recollection of what it felt like to lose an eye, and let it rain down on my unwelcome visitors.
Their screams were satisfying. Someone shouted “Hold fast!” and I knew that at least a few of the intruders had availed themselves of the open door.
After a few moments, Gammond managed to blunt my casting, but she could not dispel it completely. I switched tactics. I summoned up the terror I’d felt when, as a boy, the Theyoli had overrun the family compound and I’d heard death methodically coming for me, room by room.
Again, Gammond was able to blunt the worst of it. Emotional magic was a form of illusion, after all, if only just. But her troops weren’t battle-hardened veterans, most of them. They were shopkeepers and chandlers and tinkers. Many were fleeing now, by the sounds of it, either out the open door or back down the secret passage in the kitchen.
But not all of them.
Half a dozen armed and armored men rushed the stairs, two at a time. The first pair had shields and swords, the second pair had crossbows. I don’t know what the third pair were armed with, because nothing below their heads made it above the level of the floor before I sent my Art scything into them.
I can only disincorporate one person at a time. I can, however, cast a blade of force as long as a wagon and thin as a razor through as much flesh and mail as you please, though it drains my well alarmingly.
The various pieces of armsmen tumbled back down the stairs in a riot of blood and a fair amount of screaming.
I summoned up a little enhancement for my voice, making it a little lower and much louder, and spoke to those below:
“I’m going to kill all of you.”
I could sense Gammond working feverishly to put some steel back into her troop’s collective spine, but she was much better at sensory illusion than she was at emotional magic. And my well was deeper than hers. I let them all taste the despair I’d felt when the Shadow King forced me to make Amra feel as though molten lead were being poured into the marrow of her bones.
This was not the sort of magic I preferred, or was particularly good at. But you don’t have to be a trained carpenter to hammer down a nail with a sledgehammer. You don’t have to be a minstrel to scream. I could swing harder and scream louder than Gammond, and subtlety be damned. Gammond didn’t have the well to stand toe-to-toe with me, and she knew it.
“If you want your servants to live,” she shouted up the stairs, “you’ll stop right now.”
“You say that as if they weren’t already dead.”
“Two are more or less unharmed. One might survive, if he gets attention soon.”
“I’ve only got your word, which you’ll admit doesn’t carry much weight.”
I heard her mutter something. Some furniture shifted. Then I heard Marle’s voice.
“She’s not lying, Magus.”
Gammond was perfectly capable of mimicking someone’s voice.
“Tell me everyone’s state. By name please, Marle.”
“Chalk’s still alive, but took a blow to the head that put him out. Thon didn’t make it. Keel is breathing, but he’s got a foot of steel pinning him to his wardrobe, through the thigh.” He paused. When he spoke again, his voice was lower. “There’s a lot of blood come out of him, magus, and it ain’t slowing much.”
Dead gods. I couldn’t give in to Gammond. She’d just kill me and then kill them. She had to. She’d gone too far by invading the Citadel, my stated sanctum, and she knew it. She knew, soon or late, I would force a final reckoning on her. Even if I swore I wouldn’t pursue her, she’d never believe me.
The silence stretched. Through the big barred window I heard a low roar, a distant thunder of open throats and clarions. I stole a cautious glance down the mount.
When was assaulting the barricades. Virtually all the armsmen who had been loitering around the houses of the gentry were now streaming down the mount, dressed for battle. Hidden from view, steel met steel and rang echoing up the hill, along with screams of agony and battle fever.
“Gammond,” I called.
“What?”
“You’re about to lose your war.
When has begun her assault, and I very much doubt it will go well for your side if I keep your reinforcements pinned and disorganized here.”
I heard her move, presumably to take a look for herself. Then I heard her curse.
“Send me up my men,” I told her, “And I swear by my name and my power I will not interfere with your forces leaving the Citadel. Or don’t, and watch me make damned sure your cause will fail.”
It was her turn to let the silence stretch.
“Your time is leaking away, Gammond.”
“Damn you to all hells,” she said. Then I heard Keel scream. Then he started using the kind of language I’d been beaten for as a child. Then he and Marle appeared on the stairs, Marle supporting him.
“He’ll need a tourniquet,” Marle told me as he lowered Keel to the floor. “I’ll go back and collect Chalk.” And he did.
Blood was indeed pumping out of Keel’s thigh at a steady pace. He was already pale, his lips chalky. I ripped off my belt and wrapped it around his thigh above the wound, but couldn’t get it tight enough with just my hands. I needed a stick or something else long and stiff enough to twist the leather tighter.
I looked around the room, which was bare except for the casques, the bed—whose wooden posts were far too thick—and the Telemarch’s cloth-covered easel.
Perfect.
“Hold tight to the belt,” I told Keel, and went and smashed the easel apart, knocking the covered painting to the floor. I broke one of the easel’s legs in half, then returned to Keel and jammed it between the leather and his thigh, and twisted, hard and tight.
“Gorm on a stick!” he swore.
“Don’t be a baby,” I told him, and he gave me a look that said he’d happily murder me in my sleep. Then, eyelids fluttering, his eyes rolled up into the back of his head and he slumped forward, passed out from blood loss and pain.
Marle stumbled awkwardly up the steps then, carrying Chalk across his shoulders. As soon as he’d cleared the last step I wove a binding over the stairwell. It wasn’t particularly strong, since only air was being bound, but it would serve.
Marle laid Chalk in my bed and stood back up. I could see he’d taken a beating about the face. He’d have some ugly bruises soon enough.
“Are you well?” I asked him.
“Well enough. Better than Thon, and better than these two. How did they break in, magus?”
“It’s my fault. A moment of carelessness on my part led them to the Girdle entrance. Gammond was mage enough to take advantage.” I moved to the window and watched Gammond’s strike force boil out of the Citadel’s front door, take a few casualties from the bowmen among the troops When had left to pin me in the Citadel, and then overwhelm them with sheer numbers. It was more than a hundred against a dozen. When that slaughter was done, they took a moment to regroup and then set off down the mount to where the true battle was raging. Gammond’s illusions began to draw around them, I saw with my magesight and my eye. Silent and flickering, mostly hidden by a sorcerous mist, they would fall on the rear of When’s battle line, wreaking havoc.
“What do we do now?” Marle asked.
“We wait for the last of them to clear out. And then I get our injury-prone young friend here some help.”
“And after that? Seems everyone in the city has it in for you now. No offense.”
“It does, doesn’t it? Well I’ve got what I need now, more or less. Time to take our leave.” But before I left, I’d give both Gammond and When something to remember me by, and sooner rather than later. The memory would not be a fond one for either of them.
I am not, sadly, a live and let live sort of person.
Seventeen
Keel needed attention as soon as possible. I waited another minute or so, then went down the stairs behind gale-force winds I summoned to clear my path. Good thing, too. Gammond had left two crossbowmen behind to try and finish me. They weren’t able to draw a bead on me, having to fire into a gale, though one got off a quarrel before I disincorporated him.
There wasn’t anyone else on the ground floor. I closed the door and raised the wards once more, then investigated the kitchen. It was free of assassins. I wrestled the splintered kitchen table up against the hearth and set a binding on it, so that the troops who had fled back the way they’d come couldn’t reenter. It wasn’t the best binding I’d ever managed, but it would hold while I went for help for Keel.
Before that, I went and looked for Thon in the mess of bodies and body parts in case Marle had been mistaken. There were quite a few more corpses than I could personally account for, so Thon and Chalk must have had some effect before being overwhelmed. I hadn’t seen Thon in my initial sweep.
I found him half-sprawled across one of the beds. He hadn’t had time to get his armor on, but reading the battle-sign, it looked as if he’d still taken three men with him. A spear had done for him, and they’d cut his throat just to make sure.
I closed his eyes and removed the blood-spattered burning tower brooch from his shirt. He wouldn’t need it any more. I would. I slipped the thing into a pocket and left.
Hurvus, the Hardside chirurgeon, would be practically impossible to find, and wouldn’t be dragged away from the stream of casualties coming to him today for one boy in any case. Greytooth was much closer, if he was home. I didn’t know for certain that Fallon Greytooth could heal others beyond curing headaches, but he could damned well heal himself, which was more than I could say, and that gave me hope. If he couldn’t, then Keel was getting a red hot poker in his wound, which might or might not stop the bleeding, but would definitely leave him crippled for a long time, maybe forever. If he survived at all.
The temperature had fallen, and the drizzle-slick streets of the night before, while not completely glazed over with ice, certainly sported patches of the stuff. Enough that watching my footing took up too much of my attention, and when I turned a corner, I consequently almost died.
One bowman had been stationed on the way to Greytooth’s house, a mercenary. I turned the corner, looked up from the cobbles, and there he was, about twenty yards away, shaft already nocked. I’ve no idea whose coin he took or why he wasn’t down at the main event, nor did I bother to ask.
I tried to dart back around the corner, and so of course my foot went out from under me on a patch of ice, and down I went.
The arrow came perilously close to me. It hit and splintered on the cobbled slope behind me, perhaps a foot distant, with a sound like breaking bone.
I dispatched him before he got his fingers on the fletching of a second arrow, carefully regained my feet, and walked on, through his blood.
#
Greytooth didn’t answer my strident knocking, so I carefully sent a whisper of power through his wards. Not enough to activate them; I wanted to live. But enough that he would certainly notice, and investigate.
The door opened less than a minute later.
“I assumed it was you,” he said.
“Why is that?”
“I know no one else who would be so insistent, and so cavalier with dangerous magic.”
“It’s an emergency. Keel’s been gravely injured. You know I’ve no skill in healing. Will you come?”
“Aye. Wait a moment.” He disappeared back inside, and then returned with a satchel tossed over a shoulder. We started back up the mount.
“I can’t guarantee I’ll be able to help,” he warned me. “My healing comes not from the Art, but the Philosophy. It has limitations.”
“I appreciate you trying, in any case.”
The rest of the walk happened in silence. He did not ask what had happened. I hadn’t really expected him to. We arrived at the Citadel and I passed him through the wards.
“They’re on the second floor. Thank you for your assistance.” I took Thon’s passkey out of my pocket and handed it to him. “It’ll let you come and go through the wards.”
He frowned. “It’s bloody.”
“Sorry.” I turned to go.
&nb
sp; “Where are you off to?”
“I’ve got scores to settle.”
“I thought you didn’t care about Bellarius,” he called after me.
“I don’t,” I replied, and I meant it.
#
When I was born my father took me to the Seer of Dragon’s Eye, as was his right as a battle mage and against my mother’s wishes. I do not, of course, remember the episode. But I was told that the Seer took one look at me and said that my well was as deep as she had ever seen. This made my father very happy. Then she said that I would either be a ruler or a reaver, the difference being a vanishing one to her old eyes. This made my father distinctly less happy.
“Not a battle mage?” asked my father.
“A mage, yes, of course. And he will see battle. But not a battle mage.”
As far as my father was concerned, she might as well have told him I would be a tinker. He loved my mother, but he lived for his duty. That I would not follow in his footsteps and take oath to a border lord, fighting the good and honorable fight against belligerent northmen, or grohl to the west, or the twisted horrors that still lash out at Gosland from the Broken Lands to the south—well.
The Seer was never wrong. So I grew up on my mother’s family holdings in Fel Radoth instead of the mossy marches of Southern Gosland. And at sixteen I was packed off and apprenticed to Yvoust.
I sometimes wonder what I might have been, if I’d been apprenticed to a sane master of the Art, rather than a sadistic one. Might I have become, in time, a lord of some demesne; a ruler, as the seer had said was half-possible?
I honestly cannot imagine such a fate now.
So. I had what I needed from Bellarius. I’d taken what I’d come for, just as any reaver would. As any reaver would once they’d secured their spoils, I would depart. But before that, I did what any self-respecting reaver did, once they’d taken what they wanted.
I set fire to the rest.
#
Here is the thing about a magician and his well: You don’t know when you’ve drained it until you do, and you find out because you collapse into unconsciousness. So you learn early to judge when you’re in danger of doing so, and you learn early to get a feel for the rate at which your well replenishes.
The Thief Who Wasn't There Page 12
