City of Bones

by Martha Wells

  "And this book is the guide. It gives the clues that any knowledgeable Mage or Warder, or a fakir for that matter, could use to open the Doors of the West, to let the Inhabitants back into our world." Arad rubbed his temples. "Perhaps our philosophers have been wrong. Perhaps this place the Ancients called the West is the land of the dead."

  Khat took the book away from him, turning the folded pages thoughtfully but not really seeing the words. Sonet Riathen wasn't wrong about the book at all. Arad had read that part; he just hadn't seen the implications the way the Master Warder would. The book said that the Inhabitants of the West had brought new magics to the Ancient Mages. If Riathen let them back into the world, they would do the same for the Warders.

  Right before they killed everyone and made the Waste rock rise again.

  ***

  The house boasted a cistern and a small room with a basin for bathing, and Khat used it to clean up a bit and to get rid of the three-day beard growth, since looking even more like a foreigner wasn't going to do him any good with anybody. Before he did anything else he wanted to read the key passages in the text for himself, so he took over a corner of the scholar's workroom while Arad went off to take care of his other commitments at the Academia and to send another messenger to Elen.

  Arad had two servants, a pimply boy who was plainly terrified of Khat, even when the krismen was doing nothing more alarming than sitting on the floor reading, and the old woman who had looked in on him earlier. She treated him with the casual contempt of a close relation, coming in to threaten him for not eating the pottage she had brought him earlier, and snarling at him when he asked her suspiciously what was in it. He had a good idea who had been in charge of the messier parts of taking care of him.

  About midway through the afternoon, when Khat had read enough to badly want to discuss it with Sagai, or Arad, or even Elen, Ecazar arrived.

  Khat had heard him coming down the entrance hall and assumed it was Arad-edelk returning. When he looked up Ecazar was already crossing the room, and it was too late. It might have been too late anyway; the house was still surrounded by Academia vigils.

  The text was unfolded across his lap, and Khat didn't bother to try to stand. He had borrowed Arad's reading lenses, finding they made the task easier when the light shifted into afternoon, and now pulled them off so he could see Ecazar.

  Hard eyes glaring down above a brief veil, the Master Scholar said, "I've spoken to Arad. Is it true?"

  "It could be," Khat admitted. "It could also be a collection of mad ramblings."

  Ecazar scratched his chin under the veil, eyes narrowing, and said, "What can be done about it?"

  You want my opinion? Khat thought, startled and suspicious. At least he assumed the question was directed at him; Ecazar was talking to a spot on the wall about three feet above his head. Wary, he answered, "Nothing, until the Master Warder stops refusing Arad's messengers."

  "It isn't only Arad's messengers he refuses; he won't see mine, either." Ecazar hesitated. "There may be something wrong on the First Tier. We have only a few students from the highest families, but none have come down to meet with their tutors since the day before yesterday."

  Khat had no reply to that, and felt the conversation lag. He wished Ecazar would go away. To provoke him, he said, "When are you going to call the Trade Inspectors again?"

  Ecazar finally met his eyes, angry. "I didn't send for them the first time."

  It came to Khat suddenly that Ecazar couldn't have been too suspicious of him, or he would never have allowed Khat and Sagai into Arad's house the first time, when Elen had asked to speak to the younger scholar. If Ecazar had thought him a thief, he would never have allowed Khat to see that mural, to know it existed at all. Still, Khat asked, "If you didn't, then who did?"

  The Master Scholar snorted. "I assume it was one of your other criminal associates," he said, turning away. But he hesitated again, and without looking back, added, "I disagreed with Scholar Robelin on any number of points, but handing one of his former assistants over to the Trade Inspectors would be an insult to his memory I do not intend to make."

  Khat said nothing, not sure he wanted to believe him because that meant forgiving him, and he wasn't ready for that yet. But he remembered something he wanted to ask. "Wait. What were you looking for that night?"

  Ecazar stopped in the doorway, grudgingly. "What do you mean?"

  "When you took the relic with the winged figure back to the Porta. What were you looking for?"

  The scholar raised an eyebrow, but didn't ask how Khat knew this. He said, "That figure. There was a scholar-I finally discovered it was Ivius-atham-who identified that stylized winged man as a symbol he called the 'seal of the great death,' or alternately the 'seal of the great closing.' His source was a scrap of Ancient Script he discovered bound in with a Last Sea text. I was looking for my notes on his work."

  "A death symbol?"

  "It's possible he was wrong. I've reread his translation of the scrap, and I suspect it's faulty. I would need the original document to be sure, but that is owned by a collector in Alsea."

  Ecazar had unbent as far as he was going to, maybe as far as it was possible for him. He left, and Khat sat there for some time thinking, before he put the lenses on again and went back to the book.

  ***

  Arad returned late in the day, looking tired, dust-covered, and footsore. "You went to the First Tier," Khat said accusingly.

  "I did," Arad admitted, easing himself down onto a stool and putting aside his veil. He accepted a cup of tea from the old servant woman, and said, "The guard at the Master Warder's gate wouldn't admit me, or even take a message in, so I loitered in the street for a long time, and saw no one leave or enter. In fact, I saw no one moving in the house at all," he added.

  "No one at all?" Khat asked, thinking of how busy the huge manse had seemed when he had been there. He was worried about Elen. She was a meticulous person, and scrupulous to a fault, and would never have ignored Arad's messengers, no matter what the circumstances. If nothing was wrong, she would have contacted one of them by now.

  "No one in the outer court, or on the part of the terrace that I could see over the wall, and no one moved past the windows on the upper floors."

  "That was dangerous, Arad."

  The scholar shrugged. "I didn't let Master Riathen pay me for the relics he took. Anyone who saw me there might think I had changed my mind, and wished to see him about that. But where would the Master Warder go?"

  Khat shook his head. It was easy to imagine Sonet Riathen being called away on some important business; it was not easy to imagine him taking his students, the other Warders who lived in his household, and the servants who kept the place. It didn't explain where Elen had gone. Khat put the book aside and stretched. He hadn't moved except to fold and unfold pages for a long time, and even his hands were cramped.

  Either Riathen had been taken away somewhere and all his household dispersed, or he had dismissed them himself and gone somewhere no one could reach him. Khat knew which one he suspected. He just hoped the Master Warder hadn't taken Elen with him.

  "I could try approaching one of the other households of Warders," Arad was saying.

  "No. There's too good a chance that they would just arrest you first and ask questions later."

  "It's a possibility, I suppose." Arad sipped his tea quietly for a moment, then said, "You're going up there, aren't you?"

  Khat nodded. There was no point in dissembling.

  "If it was dangerous for me to stand in the street, how much more dangerous is it for you to try to enter the house?" Arad protested.

  "If you have a better idea, I'd like to hear it."

  Arad put his cup aside and rubbed his face, sighing in frustration. "We don't even know if this transcendental device the text speaks of really exists, or where it is. Do you think Riathen's copy named its location?"

  "It didn't need to. I know where it is, or where part of it is, anyway. So does Riathen.
So do you."

  Arad stared. "Where?"

  "The first relic Riathen found. It was the plaque that the High Justice had, which was the only piece of the set that was really identifiable as a fragment of an arcane engine. Remember, it fits into the antechamber wall of the Tersalten Flat Remnant. You know," he added pointedly, "the one to the west?"

  "Oh. Oh my." The scholar appeared to be suffering from great excitement or physical pain. Khat sympathized; it was the reason he hadn't felt much like eating all day. It was one thing to hypothesize about the existence of arcane engines and "transcendental devices," but quite another to know where one might be found. Arad asked, "Inside the wall, perhaps?"

  "Or under it. No one ever thought to look there. Until now."

  Chapter Sixteen

  It was full dark when Khat used the quieter streets to work his way over to the tier wall, past closed shops and sleeping houses, avoiding the noise and light of the area around the theater. He still had Elen's Warder token, but he didn't intend to use it. It would be too easy for someone to order the tier gate vigils to arrest any non-citizens who presented one.

  Khat went down one of the narrow courts that dead-ended at the high wall of the rail wagon's corridor, and from there into a narrow alley behind the houses, freezing when he heard a baby cry from inside one of them. The cry died out as the child fretted itself back to sleep. He felt along the fine stone of the rail corridor's wall until he encountered the first handhold. The edges were crumbling, a sign it hadn't been used in a while. That was probably good. Some of these chinks in the wall had been chipped out by earlier entrepreneurs; some he had added himself. Since the rail wagon had been installed, it made a fine way up to the Third Tier, if you were careful.

  Khat hauled himself up, silently cursing the loose chips of rock that his boots dislodged. He reached the top and struggled over, dropping down on the other side to land with a crunch on a pile of broken glass. The black wall of the Third Tier was looming above him; some idiot had probably thrown a bottle off the top. He spent the next few moments picking glass out of his boot soles.

  The corridor was only about twenty feet across and stank of tar and grease. The other side was set flush against the base of the Third Tier. He made his way down to the bend, where the corridor turned from crossing the width of the Fourth Tier to run parallel to the tier wall and start its long climb up to the Third. The two rails glinted faintly in the moonlight, but it was impossible to see one lone kris hunkered down against the wall. This was the best way to catch a ride on the rail wagon; jumping onto it from above was too obvious. And waiting here, as the wagon came off its straight path and onto the curving one that paralleled the wall, he would be well below the line of sight of the vigils who rode the top.

  After a long, uneasy wait, the rails started to shake, and the dull throbbing roar of the approaching wagon echoed up the corridor. Fortunately his timing wasn't off, and it was heading up; it would have been intolerable to have to wait for its return trip.

  The glow of the running lamps gradually became visible, and the noise was deafening as the wagon drew near. It was actually three steamwagons linked together, with one steering platform in the front. The big, black iron monster slowed as it reached the bend in the corridor and with grinding gears made the turn. It was close enough for him to study intently how the wheels were fixed onto the rails, how the paneled metal sides, etched with decorative scrollwork, kept out the dust, and for the heat to wash over him with the tang of hot metal that was oddly like the taste of blood. There were vigils up on the topside platforms with air guns, but they were fifteen feet above his head, and were watching the track in front of the wagon. And lazy, he thought. Now that the novelty had worn off, only professional thieves used the rail wagon to go from tier to tier anymore, and they were never caught.

  The third linked wagon passed, then the first of the tall, boxlike cargo wagons. He would have to catch hold behind the first car; the ones further back were more likely to be dropped off on the Second and Third Tiers. Khat stood, caught the handrail at the back of the first car, and pulled himself up between it and the second car. The space was narrow, the second car ominously close behind him, and after a tense moment he found footing on the protruding undercarriage.

  Careful to keep his head down, Khat let out his breath in relief. Now the trick was to hold on and try not to think about what would happen if something went wrong and the two cars slammed together And hope no one saw him before the wagon reached the First Tier-he had never ridden it that far up before.

  ***

  The rail wagon groaned like a dying rock demon as it mounted the steep ramp up to the First Tier. It passed through the short tunnel in the tier wall, and Khat buried his head against his arms, choking on the backwash of heat and steam. The tunnel was blessedly short, and the rail wagon came out onto the First Tier, into a wide flat area surrounded by high walls, though undoubtedly they were there to protect the residents from the sight of the ungainly cargo wagons, not to keep anyone out. Lamps and ghostlights hung at intervals from ornate, twisted metal poles, but they didn't eliminate all the concealing pools of shadow.

  Khat had been lucky; all the cars except the one behind him and the one he was holding on to had been detached at the Second Tier. The luck was nice, but it left him uneasy, knowing the more he had of it now, the more likely it was to fail spectacularly at some later point.

  The rail wagon slowed gradually to a halt now, hissing and groaning. Crewmen waiting on the hard-packed dirt of the yard walked up to the first of the steamwagons, calling greetings to the carters and ignoring the vigils who were clambering awkwardly down from their posts.

  Khat slipped off the undercarriage and crossed the ground hurriedly, staying low and dodging the pools of lamplight. He circled behind two enclosed passenger wagons and made it to the outer wall, which was far enough away from the lamps to be well shadowed. Once there, he quickly discovered there was no scaling it without a rope and a grappling hook. Cursing to himself, he moved along it to the gate. This was a big iron barred affair with copper mesh panels to make it more attractive from the outside. There was also a small door cut into it for the use of servants and crew, so they could come and go without the trouble of opening the entire barrier. A gatekeeper was slumped against this side of the wall, either asleep or dozing, with only a weak ghostlamp to light his way.

  Khat stood back in the shadow, considering his options, then simply walked up to the smaller door and lifted the latch. Without moving, the gatekeeper grunted an inaudible query at him. Khat grunted back, stepped out, and pulled the door to.

  Outside he leaned against the wall, getting his bearings. The gate opened onto one of the First Tier avenues, with a tiled marble colonnade on the far side. It was quiet and deserted. The smell of a fragrant garden was in the air, and the sound of water running somewhere nearby. After the stink of the rail wagons, it was a welcome relief.

  As Khat had discovered on his earlier visit, the First Tier was ridiculously easy to make your way around in, as long as you stayed away from private houses and kept a respectful distance from the palace environs. There were trees, flowering bushes, fountains, and walkways for strolling Patricians, which also provided plenty of cover for someone who didn't want to be easily observed. Since access was controlled from the gate, the rail yard, and the private entrances like Sonet Riathen's, there were few patrolling vigils.

  Khat had to hide behind a bench once, and again in a cluster of persea, as silk- and gold-draped litters passed, each accompanied by a mob of lamp-carrying servants. But even for the First Tier it was oddly quiet. Some of the houses were glowing with lamplight from windows and back terraces, emitting discreet music, loud talk, and laughter. But most were locked up tight, with only a few lit windows. The latter grew more frequent as he neared the area of Riathen's giant manse.

  Khat approached it the way he knew best, through the garden where the embassy pavilion stood, where he would have a good view of the rai
sed terrace and the entire back facade. He scrambled over the low wall, brushed through a stand of trees, and found one of the narrow pebbled paths. Staying on it made far less noise than smashing through the greenery.

  The pavilion itself was dark, and Khat remembered the kris embassy would have departed days ago. Riathen's house was just as dark and silent. Moonlight traced the limestone walls, making ghostly shapes out of the flowing carvings on the pediment. He could barely see the outline of the great terrace.

  Abruptly Khat halted, crouching down below the level of flowering shrubs lining the path. Someone was moving through the undergrowth about twenty yards off to his right, softly but purposefully heading in the direction of Riathen's house.

  It was too late for a gardener, though not for a lover out looking for a trysting place, but somehow Khat didn't think the other intruder was either. People were avoiding this area for some reason, and anyone deliberately heading into it was worth talking to.

  Khat went down the path, getting slightly ahead of his quarry, then crossed over to the narrow pebbled rim surrounding a pond. Keeping low, he leapt from the end of that to a patch of silversword, and crouched down to wait. From here he should be able to get a good look at the intruder, as whoever it was passed from the heavy bushes into a section of relatively open ground.

  Across the little clearing a figure emerged, stepping sideways to free itself from the clinging greenery, glancing around cautiously and not seeing Khat, who was crouched low, just another dark patch on the shadowy ground. It reached the center of the clearing before he recognized it by its walk and build. It was the young Warder Gandin.