City of Bones

by Martha Wells

  Unfolding the book took time. Khat paid special attention to the color of the paper inside the fanfold creases, to the places where the weakened paper had torn or crumbled, to the musty sweet smell of the aging inks. He tasted tiny fragments of several different sections, to make sure no new pulp had been mixed in with the old paper. He read enough to make sure the words flowed alternately left to right and right to left, as Ancient Script should, and checked that all the numbers he could find were in the old reckoning as well. Forgetting to translate the numbers was one of the commonest mistakes found in otherwise superb forgeries.

  This was not a superb forgery. It was a superb original. Almost from the first touch he knew what he handled here was a jewel beyond price.

  Khat looked up finally, and was a little startled to find that his back ached from bending over and the shadows had lengthened. The lictors and the other Warder were leaning on the walls, and Elen was sitting on the edge of the cistern, Seul next to her. Riathen hadn't moved. Khat said, "It's genuine Survivor work." He took a deep breath, and wished he was telling this to anyone but these Warders, who had no need for coin and, as far as he could tell, little reverence for unique relics. "It's in Ancient Script, so the text itself may be even older than Survivor." No reaction; he might have been speaking to statues. He tried again. "This isn't just a better copy of a book the Academia already has. It's new."

  "Can you read the old script?" Riathen asked, his face expressionless.

  "I can only pick out a few words, and the numbers. But I can tell from the engravings it's original," Khat lied on impulse, and the back of his neck prickled. He had suspected the book was an entirely new find the moment he had deciphered the title, and confirmed it with a brief examination of the text. Elen knew enough about him to doubt that statement, and he waited for her to contradict him, but she remained silent. "You'll have to show it to someone else if you want it translated," he added cautiously.

  "No need, I've read it." Riathen smoothed the front of his robe in a preoccupied way, and Khat thought the old man looked relieved.

  But Kythen Seul shook his head and sighed in a long-suffering way that seemed to invite attack with some sort of blunt club. "How do you know he's telling the truth, Riathen?" he said.

  Khat sat back wearily and rested his arms on his knees. His head was pounding, he hurt all over, and he was doing valuable work under duress that he wasn't getting paid for, and Seul seemed to think the Warders were the aggrieved party. "Take it to another dealer. Of course, you might have to pay him."

  Elen's lips twitched in a smile. Khat pretended not to see it.

  "Why did you taste the paper?" Riathen asked.

  Khat looked away, suddenly self-conscious under that steady regard. "New paper isn't as tart. They rinse the pulp more often now."

  Riathen stepped forward finally and leaned down to move one of the book's folds, so gently Khat didn't feel the need to wince. He could make a good guess as to who had handled the book so carefully that it was still in such good condition. Riathen treated it with respect for its age and delicacy, but if he had been a true collector, his hand would have trembled to touch it. The old man said, "I am searching for two more relics similar to those in this drawing. Have you ever seen their like before?"

  Engraving, Khat thought. Not drawing. The inks had faded on this page, and he had to peer at it closely. One of the figures appeared to be the plaque Elen had stolen. The shape was right, and the artist had been careful to show the ripples of different colors playing across its surface and the lines of crystal. Next to the plaque was an oval shape, faceted, with the stylized design of a winged figure embossed or inscribed into the center. That was distinctive. Ancient depictions of birds were rare, and valuable.

  The third piece was a large square block covered with what might be random line patterns or Ancient Script, indiscernible in the faded ink. Near the three figures in neat lettering were the dimensions of each, and the word mythenin, which seemed meant to indicate the material they were made of. Khat's brows rose as he converted the numbers, and he did it twice more to make sure he hadn't erred.

  The oval faceted piece wasn't unusual in size. It was small enough to fit into his palm. The square block was four feet long and two feet high. It wasn't a known type, but its presence in the Survivor-era book and the mythenin comment seemed to indicate that it might be Ancient as well. "This oval is a common type, except for that crest or incision in the center-that makes it valuable. This other, I don't know. Something that size would cause a sensation in the market. Unless the figures here are wrong."

  "The figures are accurate."

  Khat didn't bother to argue. He had never been able to fathom why people assumed the scribes who had laboriously copied out these texts were infallible simply because they were decades dead.

  "I know these relics are somewhere in Charisat," Riathen said. "What would your price be for locating them?"

  Khat went blank. He looked over at Elen, back at Riathen. "What would my price be if I didn't locate them?"

  Serious, Riathen said, "I assume you're asking about the consequences of failure. I would ask that you keep silent about your dealings with us, but I also understand that that is a usual feature of this sort of arrangement." He shrugged. "You would simply have to trust me, as I would have to trust you."

  Khat had difficulty getting his thoughts around the whole idea. Being able to locate relics for them seemed to imply that he wouldn't be dead or in prison in the near future. "I want the rest of what Elen said she'd pay me, plus . . ." No good asking for a percentage of the sale; he was reasonably sure the old man didn't want these to resell at a profit. "Plus two hundred-day tokens for each find, if they're comparable in value to the one I've already seen."

  "That's seems fair." Riathen smiled again, and Khat knew the price was probably ridiculously low to him. But it was fair, and it would be a fortune down on the Sixth Tier.

  Looking up at Riathen, Khat suddenly realized there was someone standing behind the old man in the darker well of the antechamber.

  Khat blinked, thinking he had been deceived by the dust in the air or the reflected glare of the water in the cistern. The man standing beneath the arch of the antechamber wore threadbare black, the skirts of his robe girded up above tightly bound leather boots suitable for traipsing the Waste. He was tall for a city dweller, taller than Khat even, and broad in the shoulders, though the hair under his dark headcloth was whitened by the sun and by age. Condemned criminals were made to wear black, and it wasn't odd to see robes of that color out in the Waste, but a painrod hung from his wide leather belt, so he must be a Warder. Khat decided he must be more off-balance than he had first thought, to have missed this apparition waiting with the other Warders outside.

  Then he met the man's eyes, pale, amused, and utterly mad.

  Khat started to fold up the book automatically, without any thought but that it was better out of the scuffle that was sure to occur.

  Sonet Riathen followed his gaze, and the reaction was amazing. Kythen Seul came to his feet, snapping the painrod off his own belt. One of the lictors brought his air rifle up as if to fire, but the other Warder grabbed the barrel to stop him.

  Riathen held up one hand to restrain them. Theatrical, Khat thought, and saw that thought reflected in the eyes of the intruder. Only Elen hadn't moved, sitting where she was bolt upright on the edge of the cistern.

  Riathen's face was grim, as if he faced a threat too much for even a Master Warder. Softly, he said, "What do you want here, Constans?"

  "I wanted to see what you wanted here. Surely you didn't think your exodus would go unnoticed?"

  Khat recognized that voice. But you were here long before the First Tier delegation arrived. The man's size seemed right, from what little he had been able to guess last night. Khat tucked the folded book carefully back into its case, keeping his eyes on it, trying to look like no one of particular importance.

  "To carry the tale back to your master?"
It would have been a sneer, if Riathen hadn't been too well bred for such things.

  "Our master." The answer was gentle mockery.

  "How did you get past my men below?"

  "Easily. They're all dead."

  Khat looked up, startled. The others were held immobile in an instant of shock. Then he saw the faint smile, and the man Riathen had called Constans said, "No, I left them alive, unfortunately, to plot more treason."

  Riathen's brows drew together. "Nothing I do here is treason."

  "I prefer not to debate the point. You know politics has no interest for me." Constans looked down at Khat, who was still holding the book and felt he had failed in his attempt to remain inconspicuous. "That must be the brilliant addition to your collection that I have heard so much about. Or was it meant to be a secret?"

  Khat said nothing under that calm, amused gaze, thinking, He knows that was me last night, that I know he followed Elen out here, and not Riathen. He felt himself being drawn into a conspiracy he wanted no part of.

  Riathen's lips thinned. "No secret," he said, with a smile that acknowledged the lie even as he spoke it. "My students wished to study the past. I brought it out here so they could see it in its context."

  Not in context, Khat thought, irritated. There was no evidence that the Survivors ever took shelter in the Remnants.

  "Then there would be no objection to my examining the book," Constans said, all sweet reason.

  "It is far too valuable to allow casual handling."

  One of the lictors leapt forward suddenly, raising his rifle like a club. He was less than a step away from Constans when he staggered backward as if he had been struck a heavy blow. The rifle clattered to the stone floor, and the lictor's face turned pale, then past fear-pale to death-pale. He collapsed with a sickening thump, and everyone started back. Everyone except Riathen, Elen, who dug fingers into the well's rim, and Constans, who regarded Riathen without rancor or apology and explained, "He startled me."

  The Master Warder didn't answer, but his eyes were furious.

  The lictor's corpse looked as if it had been sun-dried three days, the skin of the face as stiff and brittle as old parchment, and the others stared down at it in shock. Khat felt the warm stone of the well's basin grate against his back and realized he was still pressing against it in an effort to put as much distance between himself and Constans as possible. He made himself relax, thinking, Warder magic, and he's mad already, so he's not reluctant to use it. No knotted cords, no arcane engines, just a moment of thought and a man lay dead on the Remnant's ancient stone. Khat realized he was still the one holding the damn book.

  Riathen found his voice. "If you have no better control than that..." he began bitterly.

  Riathen's anger seemed to annoy Constans more than the lictor's attack had. He said, "I'm running out of patience, Sonet, and can stay no longer to admire your first adventure into subtlety. Give me the book."

  The Master Warder hesitated, then looked down at the fragile leather case in Khat's hands. Khat had made an agreement with the Master Warder, so in a way he had already chosen sides. He stood as if he meant to hand it to Riathen, then leaned back on the cistern's edge and held the book over the water. "Come and take it," he said, his voice even.

  The old ink would dissolve, the paper turn into a sodden lump. Elen was staring at him with wild hope. He saw why she hadn't moved. She still held the colored crystal relic, and had simply flipped a corner of her mantle over it where it lay in her lap.

  Into the silence the mad Warder asked, "Would you really do that, to an item worth how many thousands of Imperial coins?" He seemed more curious than anything else, those pale eyes thoughtful and confident.

  "It's not my book," Khat answered. He would rather have dropped himself off the top of the Remnant. Destroying any relic went against all his instincts, and the thought of destroying an original Survivor text of this quality was like a crime against nature. But he was holding it out over the water at an awkward angle, and if the man struck him dead, or even leapt at him, he could hardly help but drop it.

  "Stalemate, then. For the moment," Constans said, looking to Riathen. He seemed more amused than angry now, but Khat didn't feel that was a particularly encouraging sign.

  "For the moment," Riathen agreed, nodding cautiously.

  Constans turned back to the ramp down to the central chamber, seeming almost to meld with the shadows there, and vanished.

  After a moment of tense silence, Riathen said, "Follow him, Gandin. But not too closely. Only make certain he is really gone."

  The other Warder nodded an acknowledgment and slipped after Constans, and Khat hugged the book to his chest. His arm had been getting tired. Seul went to kneel at the side of the dead lictor.

  "It was my fault," Elen said miserably, watching him. "I called attention to us by coming here."

  "No, he knew enough already." Riathen shook his head, absolving her of responsibility. "You merely gave him an opportunity to force a confrontation. And he has told us something else." He nodded at Khat, who was still leaning on the edge of the cistern. "He could have forced you to destroy it, but he did not. He wants it intact, for himself."

  Shaking his head, Seul rose and muttered, "I didn't realize how powerful he was."

  Gandin came back up the ramp and reported breathlessly, "He's gone, as far as I can tell. I lost him at the door of the Remnant. And none of the others were harmed. They didn't even know he was here." He was a young man under his loose veil, and the hair escaping from his headcloth was as blond as Elen's.

  Seul glanced at Khat, then asked Riathen, "If he had dropped the book, what would have happened?"

  Riathen rubbed his forehead, looking like any other old man who had had a trying day. Khat almost liked him for a moment. The Master Warder said, "Constans might have simply bowed to the inevitable and left, or..."

  He hesitated and Khat supplied, "Or killed all of us in a fit of pique."

  "There was that possibility," Riathen admitted ruefully. "You've fallen in with dangerous companions, I'm afraid."

  Khat handed him the book, thinking of all the things Riathen didn't know. "Well," he told him, "so have you."

  The sun flooded the Waste with red light, the dust in the evening air adding the colors of gold, orange, and amber, as the Warders' large steamwagon rattled and clanked and shook its way back to Charisat. Watching the sunset, Khat thought of the cult in Kenniliar Free City that worshiped the sun's nightly descent as a ritual death by wearing red mourning robes and holding an elaborate funeral every evening. He supposed he could understand their need to somehow mark the passage of beauty, and it did give them something to do.

  Elen leaned next to him on the railing of the wagon's back platform, the lictors ranged around, watchful for pirates and other dangers in the fading light. Seul and the other Warders were up at the front or on top of the housing, except for Gandin, who stood against the railing near Khat and Elen. The body of the dead lictor had been wrapped in its own mantle and laid inside the housing. It had surprised Khat a little that they had bothered. He hadn't expected either Patricians or Warders to have so much care for the corpses of their servants. But no one had spoken of the man who had killed him. "Who is Constans, Elen?" he asked, just loud enough to be heard over the wagon's rattle.

  The wind whipped her man's robes around her, and her lips were set grimly. "A madman," she said.

  "Besides that."

  "His name is Aristai Constans." Riathen's voice answered from the vicinity of the housing behind them, and Khat managed not to start too obviously; he hadn't known the old man was back there. Riathen continued, "There have always been Warders who press their abilities past their learning, despite the danger. Perhaps because of the danger. He is one of them."

  "When he killed Esar, the lictor . . . that act alone would have been enough to drive any one of us over the edge," Elen added, and shivered.

  Khat waited until Riathen moved away toward the front of the wago
n. The old man had been stalking back and forth as if he expected trouble. Gandin moved a little closer, watchful. Probably he had been set to guard the unwilling guest. Ignoring him, Khat said, "Tell me about Constans."

  Elen glanced at him, frowning, perhaps puzzled by his persistence, but she said, "He was with Riathen from the time he was a boy. He came from Alsea, near the coast. Riathen brought him back when he went there on an embassy. Everything I know is hearsay, of course." She shrugged uneasily. "He was always powerful, always Riathen's best student. He became friends with the Elector, and I suppose Riathen was glad." She lowered her voice. "Riathen never has gotten on with the Elector, as far as I can tell. That's not very good. The Elector's safety is the Master Warder's most important duty.

  "But when Constans was my age, he went too far. The way I heard it, he was only doing a future-seeing-"

  "Is that different from fortune-telling?"

  "No, it's just a different term for it," Elen explained, a little exasperated. "But he must have pressed his power too far, because he went mad. He killed another young Warder." She shook her head. "The Elector wouldn't let Riathen put him to death. He didn't understand what had happened to Constans, I suppose. Or he wanted to use him for his own ends."

  Or he didn't want to see a friend die, Khat thought. But maybe they didn't have that kind of loyalty on the upper tiers. "Is that who Riathen and Constans meant, when they talked about their 'master'? The Elector?"

  She nodded. "Now it pleases him to pit Constans against Riathen. I suppose he thinks the Master Warder is too powerful. Perhaps he's right. It's a game to him. It's life and death to us." She stared back at the glowing rock of the Waste, turned to dying coals by the sun's departure. "Riathen thinks the relics, the one we have now and the other two in the book, provide the key to the Ancients' power. That if we could find them, learn their secrets, perhaps even use the knowledge they give us to build an arcane engine, we would know why our magic drives us mad, and perhaps how to stop it from happening. The Elector doesn't want to take that chance. The free use of our skills would make us all as powerful as Constans, and the Elector would have to give us equal weight in his councils."