“So I am to be your problem eliminator. I think I’d rather be your boot polisher.”
“That position is taken.”
“Speaking of filled positions. What you’re asking me to do, isn’t that what Kluge already does for you?”
“Avrom Kluge is in many ways an admirable, upstanding man. He has some skill at investigation, and a middling talent with the Art. He excels at managing resources and manpower. He has been advanced to exactly the level that best fits his abilities.”
“So he’s already tried to find the arsonist, and failed.”
“Indeed.”
“Lord Morno, I will accept your ‘offer’ since I see no palatable alternative. But I must insist one one stipulation.”
“What stipulation?”
“I have business of a personal nature that simply will not wait. It will take me out of Lucernis for an unknown amount of time. I plan to leave within two or three days, at most. I cannot accede to your request before this business is finished.”
He gave me a level stare. “And if I insist that you take up your duties now?”
“Then I will be forced to depart tonight, ill-prepared, and I will have no choice but to accept all the consequences that flow from your decision.”
He kept his gaze on me as he considered, one chewed nail tapping the top of his desk.
“All right, magus,” he finally said. “You may take up the mantle of special adviser after your return. But you’ll take the oath of fealty now.”
Damn. But it hardly mattered. If I managed to survive my trip to hells and return, I’d deal with the consequences then.
“Very well,” I said, meaning the exact opposite, and he rang his bell and stood and came around the desk.
Twenty
There was kneeling involved, and a recitation of oaths in front of three bored clerks acting as witnesses, and a very long sheet of parchment with quite an astonishing number of words writ small that I signed and he chopped. Then there was polite applause and a pat on the back, a quick sip of an inferior Courune brandy after a toast to the king—now my king—and inside of ten minutes I found myself standing on the front steps of the Governor’s Palace with a copy of my oath in my hand and a nice view of the Promenade.
I started the short walk home. It was a rather anticlimactic way to formally end my state of statelessness, after a decade. I remember thinking that Amra would laugh herself sick when I told her, and smiled. I stopped smiling when I remembered just how unlikely it still was that I’d ever see her again. With an effort I discarded such thoughts and concentrated on my surroundings. I was in Lucernis, on the Promenade, surrounded by some of the most elegant architecture in the world. It was late autumn, which in Lucernis meant it was gloriously cool and breezy. The trees were just turning, and yellow and gold leaves were everywhere. Even better, it was incredibly unlikely that anyone would try to assassinate me during my stroll. It’s the small, things, I find, that offer the most satisfaction.
The tiny front garden of the manse looked awful. But then it always did. I pushed open the ornamental gate, put a hand on the big blue front door, and whispered to it. It showed me everyone who had come knocking since the last time I asked it. No one that I recognized. I unlocked it with another whisper, and went inside.
Keel was in the front parlor. The chest full of money was there as well. Keel looked bored, to the point of falling asleep.
I tossed the parchment on a dusty credenza and said, “Wake up, Keel. Where is master Marle?”
“Off somewhere cleaning. He took one look at this place and his eyebrows went into this v shape and he started muttering. I think dust is his sworn enemy or something.”
“You’re not far wrong,” I replied. “Master Marle was in the navy.”
“Which one?”
“Pinghul, I believe. But they’re all the same, believe me. And where is Chalk and our other baggage?” Meaning Halfmoon.
“In the building at the back.”
“The carriage house.”
“If you say so. He and Marle thought it was best not to bring it inside.”
“Sensible precaution, but unnecessary. I’d ask if you all had eaten, but I know you haven’t. There’s nothing edible here. Gather everyone please, while I call a hack. We’ll have a decent lunch, and then we’ve got work to do.”
While Keel went to collect the others, I poked my head out the front door and gave a sharp whistle. A boy of about ten, one of the many who loitered on the Promenade waiting for odd jobs, waved his hat at me. I made a circling motion with my finger and he ran off in the direction of the Dragon Gate. A carriage was waiting behind the house in less than ten minutes. If you lived on the Promenade, there was always a hack available.
I made sure of Halfmoon’s containment once again, and then we were off to Fraud’s. I had the hack wait for us. The meal was excellent as always, and the service was miserable, as always. All of us ate in near-silence, having had no breakfast and having food in front of us worth concentrating on. When all that was left was mopping of gravy and picking of teeth, I spoke up.
“Gentlemen, welcome to Lucernis proper. I wish we could sit back, digest and drink wine for a few hours, but there is a fair amount of work to be done today, and only half a day left in which to do it. Here is what happens next: We secure a wagon, visit a butcher, return to the manse to pick up our cargo, then take a trip to the charnel grounds. Chalk, are you able to drive a wagon?”
“Aye, magus,” he replied.
“Excellent. Let’s be off, then.”
I would have given custom to Amra’s wainwright friend in the Spindles, but I simply couldn’t face another discussion as to her whereabouts. So I chose another more or less at random of the half -dozen in his neighborhood, paid too much for a two day rental and for the nags to pull it, and paid a deposit to rid myself of the driver that came with it. Chalk took the reins. I directed him to Traitor’s Gate market and we stopped at one of the largest butchers I knew of, where I bought half a dozen pig carcasses, mostly bled out but otherwise whole. We waited while they removed the hearts for me and packaged them separately, at my request. I was given the wax-treated canvas that held the hearts, as well as a dubious look, at no extra charge
Marle begged leave to briefly explore the market and find something to bring back to the manse for dinner, and Chalk elected to go with him. Keel sat on the wagon’s tail and took everything in. His head was on a swivel. Traitor’s Gate market was loud, boisterous, and extremely crowded.
While we waited, I poked him in the side to get his attention
“What do you think of Lucernis so far?” I asked.
“I’ve never seen so many people. I mean, Bellarius is crowded, but you end up knowing every face, near enough. Here? Impossible. How many people live in the city?”
“I’m not sure, honestly. At least half a million, if I had to guess.”
He gave a low whistle. “Easy to get lost here,” he said, staring at a pretty young fishmonger across the way, her citrine-toned skin flawless, her laugh loud and honest as she haggled with customers.
“In more ways than one, my young friend.”
#
Then we proceeded back to the manse, and loaded Halfmoon’s crate onto the wagon. It roused at once at the smell of pigs’ blood, and I pushed the creature down again into torpor. It was an effort. I’d have liked to have transported Halfmoon and the carcases separately, but the logistics just weren’t worth the trouble. So I rode in the back, sitting on the crate to keep direct contact with the rift spawn, and to keep everything but my boots out of the slowly pooling blood. They had been bled out, of course, but it would be impossible to remove every drop.
I called directions to Chalk, who was more than competent as a teamster, and by mid-afternoon we had crossed Daughter’s Bridge and were rolling along the dusty road that led to my former residence.
“Gorm on a stick!” Keel stood up abruptly, staring at the fields that surrounded us. “Those are de
ad bodies. They’re fucking everywhere!” Chalk and Marle were also wide eyed, if less loud.
“The charnel grounds,” I told them. “Or if you prefer the flowery description, the fields of the dead. Corpses on top of corpses on top of untold bones. They’re very old, these fields.” Older than even most Lucernans knew.
“These people don’t believe in burying the dead? Or burning `em?”
“Burial, yes. Cremation, never. Remember the huge white-walled edifice we passed just before the bridge? That’s Lucernis’s only graveyard. As big as it is, it isn’t big enough. The poor never make it in. The forgotten get removed, to make room.”
“Crazy,” Keel muttered. “This city is crazy.”
“Not really. They’re a bit odd about death, certainly, but they have their reasons. Otherwise Lucernans are no more crazy than anyone else.”
“Crazy as a box of frogs dancing jigs,” Keel insisted.
“Crazier than living on the side of a mountain?” I asked him, smiling.
“At least the view is a sight better than this.”
“True,” I conceded.
We arrived soon enough at the remains of my former home. A carriage was drawn up at the edge of my land. I suspected Kluge was waiting for me, and was proven right when he stepped out of the carriage as we pulled up.
“Commander Kluge. If I’d known you were going to call on me, I would have at least brought a chair for you to pull up.”
“Magus,” he replied, ignoring the others. “What’s in the crate?”
“Have you been waiting all day to ask me that question? Why didn’t you ask earlier?”
“Earlier it wasn’t important to me. Now it is.”
“What changed in the mean time?”
“Your position changed, Holgren Angrado. You went from capable mage and petty thief to special adviser to the lord governor himself.”
“First, I’m not an adviser yet, as it happens. Second, my alleged thefts were never petty. Third, if I am merely competent, what does that make you? And finally, what does any of that have to do with what’s in the crate?”
“You cannot be trusted. You are a criminal and, it seems in the light of your actions in Bellarius, an anarchist. The very thought of you being legitimized by the lord governor is worrisome in the extreme. I will be your shadow, Angrado. I will dog your every step, and I will scrutinize everything you do, and everything to do with you. And I will start by examining the contents of that crate.”
I realized three things then, in rapid succession. First, that Kluge had expected me to be punished in some form or fashion by Morno when he brought me to the palace. While I certainly felt punished, Kluge could not but help to see what had happened in the opposite light.
Second, in his own mind, Kluge was an officer of the law first and foremost. Being a mage came a distant second, which surprised me. Virtually every mage I’d ever met defined themselves by their powers.
Finally, I understood that Kluge bore me a deep enmity, both personally and professionally. He was going to be a thorn in my side as long as I had a side into which a thorn could be jabbed.
I looked around. “Where are your constables, commander?”
“I need none.”
“You mean they would do you no good.” If it came down to a duel between us, he would lose. He would need all the help he could get, but a gaggle of city watch wouldn’t make a difference.
“Where is your writ of search?” I asked him.
“I need none,” he repeated, and he was technically correct about that. As an officer of the law, all he needed was suspicion of wrongdoing. But it didn’t matter. I had to call him, immediately, and see if it was a bluff.
“I disagree, Kluge. If you’re going to be scrutinizing me to death and treading on my heels, you’re going to do it with a writ signed by the lord governor each and every time. Otherwise you will get no cooperation from me. To make it even more plain, if you want to look inside this box, I want to see a note signed by Morno himself that says ‘Show Avrom what’s in the damned box.’ If you don’t like it, you can try to take me into custody, I suppose, but it won’t go well for you. Do I make myself perfectly clear?”
He smiled. Or at least bared his teeth. “Yes. Perfectly.” Then he turned on his heel and strode back to his carriage. He got in and it rolled off, the coachman looking bored and dyspeptic, the horses and iron-banded wheels throwing yellow-gray dust up into the air.
Kluge wasn’t a good enemy to have. There are none such. He wasn’t stupid, and had a measure of power, both the temporal sort and power in the Art. But he wasn’t the worst enemy I’d ever had, not by a long, long measure. I was a little surprised he had tried to strong-arm me in such a fashion.
Keel heaved a theatrical sigh, interrupting my thoughts.
“What?”
“Do you have to make enemies of powerful people in every country you go to?”
I snorted. “Kluge isn’t powerful.”
“Can he put people in prison? Have them hanged?”
“Well, yes.” I decided not to mention Kluge also being a mage. It wouldn’t help my case.
“I don’t know what your definition of powerful is, Holgren, but I think you need to revisit it.”
“I believe ‘revise’ is the word you’re looking for.”
He squinted at me, and scratched his head. “Also, you should probably try to figure out whatever it is about you that makes people hate you so much, and then be less of that.”
“Shut up and help us with the crate.”
“With one arm?”
“Fair point. You can clean up all the blood when you get back to the manse, then. One arm’s good enough for that.”
“It’s not our wagon!”
“I want my deposit back.”
He limped off, muttering something that sounded like ‘less of exactly that’.
There was nothing left of my old house except the foundation, a few charred beams, and some broken statuary that had haunted the front garden since before I’d bought it. The wards I’d laid on the house had faded while I’d been away in Thagoth and the Silent Lands, and by the time the great fire had spread, they had not been sufficient to protect the old wooden structure. That my home had been the only one north of the Ose to burn hadn’t escaped my notice, but I honestly hadn’t much cared after returning from Thagoth. The house was gone, but I hadn’t exactly been in love with it to begin with. The location had been the important thing. And I would have abandoned the house in any case, when Amra and I moved to the Promenade.
The basement of the house was another matter entirely.
I called up a stiff breeze and blew the detritus off the foundation, scouring clean the stone and the very large iron trap door in the center of it. The wards on it hadn’t failed; I would have been very surprised if they had, given what I’d invested in them.
I bent down to inspect the door, and saw with my magesight that someone had tried, and failed, to break in since I last had checked. They had failed to gain access, but they had also escaped with their lives. Pity. Probably it had been Kluge, but that was just supposition.
Chalk and I, being the most able bodied, hauled the crate and the carcases over to beside the trap door, and then I sent them all back to the manse. Only Chalk had his burning tower badge on his person, so he got to be the key holder.
“Admit no one,” I told them, “unless they have a note from me or the Lord Governor. Or an army. I’ll be back late tonight.” Marle nodded and off they went. I was fairly certain they wouldn’t get lost, and anyone could direct them to the Promenade if they did.
Once they were out of sight, I got to work moving the rift-spawn down into the dark of my long-disused sanctum.
#
I had a fair number of dangerous items stored in the basement. Halfmoon was, by far, the most dangerous thing I’d ever kept there. So once I got the crate down the stairs, I shoved it across the tiled floor to the warded circle I had laid out years before. A perfec
t, unbroken circle of gray-white granite, five feet in diameter, it had cost me a fortune to have carved. It had cost me half as much again to have a portion of the ground floor torn up and the circle lowered down into the basement, and then to have the floor and wall repaired.
Anything could enter the circle, but nothing could come out, unless I allowed it to. I’d installed it in hopes of trapping the demon I’d sold my soul to, but it had been far too canny to step into the trap. So while it had been tested innumerable times, it had never actually been used. Until now.
I strengthened the nets that still restrained Halfmoon one last time, then set about opening the crate, pulling nails one by one using the Art. I hadn’t thought to bring a crowbar. I broke the crate down completely, leaving only the boards under the creature. Then I stepped out of the circle, imbued the granite with more than sufficient power, and severed all the knots of magic that held together the nets that confined Halfmoon.
The nets disintegrated into dust and loose fibers, and the rift-spawn exploded into motion, hurling itself at me—only to be slammed back into the center of the circle by its invisible, undefeatable barrier.
It tried that three times, then crouched on the wooden pallet, panting and glaring.
“Are you finished, then?”
It said nothing.
“Are you hungry?”
Always, it said, grudgingly.
I went upstairs and rolled one of the pigs down the steps. It was not light. I shoved it across the floor until one trotter broke the circle.
“You can pull it in the rest of the way.”
This is not man, and not alive.
“This is all you’ll be getting from now on. And since you don’t actually need to eat in order to survive, you shouldn’t complain.”
It bent down and sniffed the trotter. A pale gray tongue darted out, licking, sampling. Suddenly Halfmoon dragged the pig inside the circle, and set to gruesome work. I sat down on the tiles a careful distance away and watched it, mindful that it would do the exact same thing to me, given the chance. Within ten minutes, the pig was no more.
No blood to roll in, it complained when it was done.
The Thief Who Wasn't There Page 15
