He looked at the ground. "I'm sorry…"
"It's all right…look, I don't think you're in that much danger. The only reason to kill you would be to prevent us from learning something, and you told us everything: so killing you would only draw more attention to them, and they seem to want to avoid that."
"Oh good."
"And if you think they are going to kill you, run over to the construction site around the tower and break something: once you do, the Order will want to Bind you until you've worked off whatever damage you've caused, so if anyone hurts you during that time it will cost the Order money, and they'll do what they can to prevent it. Once you're released, the chances are whoever hired you will have forgotten about you."
"That's a shit plan."
"It's what I've got. Want to get a drink next week and tell me how it goes?"
"No." He walked away.
Haniel went back into the Adepts' quarters. Bronzino got out ink and a pen, and he and Haniel took turns holding the pen just over the monkey's head, so that the monkey would jump up, grab the pen and hang from it, while sucking the ink out. They kept on holding the pen higher and higher to see how high the monkey could jump.
After a little while, a knock sounded on the door. Bronzino and Haniel were laughing and chasing the monkey, so Chattiel got up and let in Cardozo.
His eyes looked tired behind their perpetual contemptuous glare, and he wore his injured arm in a sling. He leaned his staff against the wall and took in the scene with a wry smile: Haniel had ink on her nose, and both she and Bronzino were flushed.
"Appropriately mournful, I see."
This was one of very few times that a wizard, other than a newly promoted Adept, had set foot in the quarters since Haniel had been there; it signaled, to Haniel, something far enough out of the ordinary that a little childishness would have no bearing on it. Bronzino looked deeply worried, and Chattiel was trying not to grin, but Haniel smiled back at the wizard and pointed him to a seat.
"Chattiel, is it?" Cardozo said absently. "I'd talk to the other two in private, please leave us."
He went to his room, beaming, but Bronzino had by now picked up from the wizard's tone and demeanor that something else was going on, and he sat down and looked evenly at Cardozo, who accepted the drink that Haniel poured him.
The wizard looked thoughtful and sad, and it struck Haniel that he was trying to think of what the quarters had looked like when he had been there, and not having much success.
"Have you heard from Wit?" he said.
"No."
"We just had a report from the baron of one of the regions that he was passing through. Wit killed a rather repulsive bandit, apparently, and the baron wants us to know that he will be sending another score of cords of timber above his dues to the Order, to show his gratitude. The bandit had killed six children in a wyvern trap a year ago, and the baron had put a five hundred gold coin price on his head: I think he wanted to head Us off before We got the idea that We might be entitled to the money."
"Is Wit okay?" asked Haniel. "What was he doing killing bandits?"
"It seems that the bandit set another wyvern trap in a village, and was collecting the bribe when Wit arrived. Afterwards, the children were apparently recovered, and the bandit died, and the baron appears to think all the credit is due to Wit, although he was not clear on the details."
"I guess some good has come out of the trip, then," said Bronzino.
"What do you mean?" asked Cardozo.
"Well, we can't keep that wall up, and nothing Wit finds is going to change that."
"I have it on very good authority that there are orcs massed within a two-month march of the wall," Cardozo said. "Thousands upon thousands of them, more than have been assembled since before the great invasion. Repairing the wall will take eight months at the very least, and by that time, Youngkent will be overrun along with the neighboring provinces."
"But that's like saying that you might run over someone with a cart, and escape the damage because you had a good reason to be in a hurry: when we move beyond the narrow area in which our Power exists, we do no service of any kind to anyone."
"The people of Youngkent will end up orcish slaves," Haniel said. "We don't serve them by allowing that to happen."
"But we serve the Order, and the Alliance," said Bronzino. "I was taking to Master Movsessian about it, and he put it very well: the boundaries of the Alliance have changed hundreds of times over the years, grown and shrank, and will continue to do so; but the Principles of the Order have not budged an inch, and because of that, whatever happens to be within the Alliance, at any given time, has remained stable and just. So if taking it down might mean ruin for Youngkent, keeping it up might be ruin for us all."
Cardozo laughed. "Movsessian has only two attitudes: clinical and melodramatic; there is no middle ground. Aggravatingly, he uses both of these attitudes about the Youngkent wall: he clinically decides that it must come down, and melodramatically imagines the consequences of it staying up."
Bronzino looked troubled by this.
"He is as brilliant a wizard as I have ever known," Cardozo added, "but I wish he would just write his book and shut up."
"So you mean to keep up the wall?" Bronzino asked.
Cardozo shrugged. "It depends on the nature of the breach and my understanding of that will depend on the report I get from Wit. If the breach is, in fact, trivial in relation to the project then I think the wall might stay up." He went on, seeing the troubled look on Bronzino's face: "Which is supported by the Principles: the remedy for a breached Contract is either damages suffered as a result of the breach or perfect performance of the Contract. It is true that the Order likes to leave the choice to the injured party: but it is not in the Principles that we must."
"This is supposed to be a day off," said Haniel bitterly.
"It's supposed to be a day of mourning," said Cardozo.
Haniel made her poppy-fist over her heart, and then raised her glass. "To his memory: may his service to the Order not be forgotten." She drank.
"Mourning and investigation," said Cardozo.
"But you're not on the Capital Committee, or Discipline within the Order," said Haniel. "Shouldn't they have the investigation?"
"And you know damn well that I am the head of training—and that if a recent trainee was involved, I would be as well."
Haniel smiled. "I can account for Bronzino's whereabouts, and he for mine. Don't know where Chattiel was last night."
Cardozo turned to Bronzino. "Could you get her to stop acting like an idiot?"
"Hanny, please," said Bronzino, but she had already grown serious.
They all sat in glum silence for a moment.
"We don't even know what happened," Haniel said. "We sent Chattiel over to the tower, and he said it was someone in Advanced Binding, suicide and a note; and an investigation. That's all we really know."
"And what do you guess?"
"That she had a premonition," said Bronzino. "She had made a plan to speak to Haniel today—like she knew we would have time."
"What did she want to speak to you about?" Cardozo asked Haniel.
"I wanted to talk to her: I've spent the last two days summarizing the Order's worst books, and I think it's because I might have done some things that a wizard perceived as insulting."
Cardozo feigned shock. "Summarizing no-account books? That is completely inappropriate work for an Adept of your talent and history; if I caught you mouthing off to a full wizard, I'd have you cleaning out beakers in Alchemy. In all seriousness, why didn't you come to me about it?"
"I think you just answered that."
Cardozo looked genuinely regretful. "No, I am sorry: tell me what happened."
She did, and Cardozo pursed his lips.
"Well, you shouldn't have offered to fight him with a naked blade, that was not appropriate conduct. Also, are you sure that you didn't actually beat him?"
"And that's the other reason that I d
idn't go to you: I'd already heard that from Bronzino."
Cardozo beamed at Bronzino. "Well, he is a very Gifted wizard, and you are lucky to be able to rely on him."
"What do you know?" Bronzino asked.
Cardozo sighed. "It's an ugly bit of business, even on the outside: the wizard, Lupica, had been selling Puppets, was worried about being caught, and killed himself. Advanced Binding and Puppets go hand in hand and there was an idea that someone had been doing that for a while. Advanced hasn't had a new wizard in nearly a dozen years and there was even a thought that putting a talented new one there would shake them out."
"Do you think she killed him to take over the Puppets, or to stop him?" Haniel cut to the chase.
"If she was just looking to stop him, she could have gone to Discipline," said Bronzino.
No one said anything for a while.
"She did it to see if she could," Haniel said after a while. "It's why she does most things. Could you cast a spell, on a wizard, that would make them kill themself and write a note?" she asked Cardozo.
"I have never had occasion to try."
"Well, she has, apparently: and pulled it off."
Cardozo sighed. "There is another aspect, which is actually why I am here. The Council has, obviously, wanted Mantyger in Advanced Binding since they first learned of her: she is talented enough that, with a little more experience, she could do the work of three wizards in that department, and we could then assign them elsewhere: it would be more efficient, even if it did not have the added benefit of probably disrupting a very noxious ring of embarrassing criminal activity."
"But she's never really wanted that post," Haniel said.
"Exactly. I had not considered this possibility until I spoke with a wizard from Discipline, but they have had their eye on Advanced Binding and the Puppet ring for some years."
"It shouldn't have taken that long: they should have caught them," said Bronzino.
"Again, exactly. Which is why Discipline has suspected, for some time, that the Puppet Ring was actually controlled by someone outside of Advanced Binding, and placed very high up in the Order's hierarchy indeed. My concern is that she learned the identity of the leader from Lupica before she killed him, and now plans to use it to blackmail her way into a different posting."
Bronzino looked serious.
"Why, exactly, is that a problem," asked Haniel, "and what does it have to do with us?"
"It is dangerous, foolish and unethical—which is all as plain as the nose on your face," said Cardozo.
"Well, but a loathsome Puppeteer is dead, and the ring is set back if not stopped altogether," Haniel said. "Mantyger working in Advanced is neither here nor there: she's useful to you there, but she'd actually be just as useful doing something else, maybe more so, if it was something she liked very much. The Council would have just left her in Advanced for the rest of her life: she had to do something."
"A wizard has to follow their damn orders, and do nothing else," Cardozo snapped, "I thought that was the first thing we taught you. Anyway, I am mostly concerned for her safety and yours: if she means to go up against a wizard who sits on the Council and has evaded Discipline for decades, she very well might find herself out of her league."
"Our safety?"
"Yes: she is nothing that even resembles stupid, and she will have a very good idea of the danger she is in. She will turn to the only people that she trusts."
"So what do you want us to do when she does?" Haniel asked.
"I'd like you to report directly to me."
"What will you do?"
"I will attempt to learn the identity of the traitor and stop them."
"And to Mantyger?"
"Nothing. If she were less Gifted, there would be a greater temptation to execute her for murder and treachery, but as it stands, several more wizards in Advanced probably must be eliminated, and she could find herself doing the work of the whole department even sooner than we meant. We will need her."
"So your offer to her, which we are to pass onto her if we see her," Bronzino said, "is safety and Advanced Binding?"
"Yes."
"And what's your offer to us?" Haniel asked.
"The satisfaction of having done your duty."
Bronzino shook his head. "I have to say, head of Advanced is an awful lot, even for her. She could probably use an assistant, or two, at least to start with."
Cardozo glared at him.
"Of course, they'd have to be wizards, at least Junior Wizards, or they wouldn't do her much good."
"I don't have the authority to promote you by myself, certainly not both of you."
"Then have Hanny assigned permanently to Advanced as an Adept, and get her out of whatever nonsense she got herself into—promise me that or I'll tell Mantyger that you mean to have Discipline take apart her mind."
Cardozo looked stern, but Bronzino remained resolute. "All the gods, boy, if you follow through with that threat, you will end up with the deaths of several members of the Order on your hands…still, I think I can do better for you: I'll put the both of you under her, as Adepts in Advanced, with a promise that if the department goes without major disasters for the next six months, you will both be made wizards then. Of course, I will need the identity of the traitor, for this to happen."
"That's fair," said Bronzino.
"I hope to hear from you soon," said Cardozo, and left.
They were nearing the end of the masseuse's brandy when Mantyger arrived. She entered without knocking, and looked more disappointed in them than Cardozo had.
"All the gods, Hanny, you're drunk."
Haniel could not think of a comeback. "Can you settle a bet for us?" she asked.
"Don't be dense, give her the coin, Bronzino. Both you idiots knew since this morning."
Bronzino gave Haniel a coin.
"Cardozo says that if you tell him what you know, he'll put you in charge of Advanced, with the two of us under you as Adepts, and promotions in six months," he told her.
Mantyger sighed, poured herself the last of the brandy, and sat down. "Is that what the two of you want?"
"I don't know," Haniel said.
"Now you're being dense," Bronzino said, "we all know you won't do it."
Mantyger turned to him angrily, "I will do it, all the gods, if that's what you want. I swear."
"So why shouldn't we want it?" Haniel asked.
Mantyger nodded, smugly. "Because Advanced is a shithole, and I can do better for all of us. The wizard that I have a line on is big: and if the Council knew half of what I do about him, they'd kill him five times over. As it stands, the investigation is about to conclude that Lupica was running a Puppet ring by himself, and that even though the magic I used on him is not quite orthodox, I was acting in everyone's interest: that's enough for half of the Council to want to do me a favor anyway, and with my man pulling for us from the shadows, we'll all be able to get any posting we want.
"Cardozo talks about safety, but his plan is more dangerous and he knows it and didn't tell you. Crane will know the moment that Discipline moves on him, he ran the department for almost ten years, and he will kick like a mule. He will know that if he kills everyone who knows who he is, he will have a chance of beating the Council, and framing someone else: either me or Cardozo, depending on how it all comes out."
"And now we know it's Crane, and aren't safe either…you bitch." Haniel shook her head and Mantyger grinned.
"Even if I hadn't told you, his smart move would have been to kill you, if there was an investigation."
"A distinct advantage of Cardozo's plan seems to be that we won't be complicit in a Puppet ring, and a Puppeteer will be taken off the Council," Bronzino pointed out.
Mantyger shook her head. "He's getting out of Puppets anyway. It's all very complicated."
"But we'll have a betrayal of the Order over our heads for the rest of our careers!" Bronzino said.
"If the Order went after every wizard who looked the other way
at something noxious because they thought they had to stay alive or get ahead, there wouldn't be any wizards at all. You won't get in trouble for dealing with Crane."
Haniel nodded. "So what do we have to do?"
"Live through the night, mostly. I am to meet with Crane in four hours, and he is going to try to kill me. If he fails, he will agree to my terms."
"And what are they?"
"I want Forbidden Magic, and Haniel promoted to be my assistant. I'll also get a promise that Movsessian and Bowen's book will be printed in two years, and Bronzino, I'll have you promoted and listed as a third author."
"You're very cruel," said Bronzino, "I'd never even dreamed of that. But I must vote to have Crane brought to justice."
"Cruel? I should think so. You saw me kill a boy, right where you are sitting. Most of the Puppets were younger than we are, many children. And to hell with them: there's three people in all the world that I care about."
"Then why did you kill Lupica?" asked Haniel. "Were you that bored?"
"No, I had to, to save Wit."
"What?"
"I saw into Lupica's mind. Crane had given him a letter to send to an associate of theirs in Cohos: the letter had instructions to kill Wit when he got there. I did a rather ugly number on Lupica. I got the letter from him and burned it, but I needed him to stay alive for a few days so Crane would think it had been sent, so I Bound him to hang himself three days later. It's too late now: their friend is going to leave Cohos without the letter, and they don't have time to reach him."
"Okay," said Bronzino, "I am in."
"We both are."
"Good. Bronzino, I want you to go to this address," she said, handing him a piece of paper, "where a man I know is staying. He is, ah, under the impression that I am a scribe for the Order, not a wizard, and I told him that he would be doing me a favor if he put my cousin up for the night. Um, if he asks about the family farm, we grow grapes. Actually, you would be doing me a kindness if you could get it into his head that an old flame of mine from back home is thinking about coming to the capital. But anyway, if you don't hear from us by morning that means we're dead, and you should try to stay alive long enough to tell Cardozo everything. Haniel, I am going to try to sober you up, and then you can help me buy a sword."
Students of the Order Page 29
