Company of Strangers, #1

by Melissa McShane

  She took her spellbook and stood in front of the small oval mirror hanging on the wall over the chest of drawers. Willing it open to shift, she read off the syllables with deliberate precision and let the spell wrap itself around her. Blonde hair. Hazel eyes. A straight nose. She didn’t need imitate to resemble her sister Felice, since they already shared many of the same features, just a couple of small changes. Sienne altered her earlobes a tiny bit and glared at herself. Felice glared back. She really was beautiful, unlike Sienne, for whom the same collection of features produced only an ordinary prettiness. And now she had Sienne’s lover. Looking at her reflection, Sienne could hardly blame Rance for choosing Felice over her.

  She released shift and let her features return to normal. “Who was that?” Alaric said from the doorway.

  Sienne spun around, startled. “I didn’t know you were there.”

  “We’re ready to go. Were you practicing a disguise? I can’t say I approve of that one.”

  “Oh? Why not?” Sienne wasn’t about to admit to jealousy of her stupid sister and risk looking bitter or spiteful.

  “Too self-consciously pretty. You’d draw attention wherever you went. That kind of negates the purpose of a disguise.”

  It made Sienne feel instantly better. “It was just a whim,” she said, tucking her spellbook into her vest. “I don’t want to look like that.”

  “I knew a scrapper wizard,” Alaric said, stepping back for her to leave the room, “who hated the way he looked so much he kept a more or less permanent disguise up. More or less meaning he kept changing it, looking for the perfect face.”

  “That seems like a lot of work for vanity,” Sienne said.

  “It was. Cost him his life, in the end. He spent so much of his magical reserves on the disguise, he couldn’t cast spells at a key moment. Some of his companions died too.”

  “That’s awful.”

  “Just one more reason to be wary of magic.”

  “I would never do that.”

  “I didn’t mean that as a criticism. I trust you.”

  It was so unexpected it left her groping for something to say. “I…hope I’m worthy of that trust.”

  Alaric shrugged. “It doesn’t mean I like wizards in general any better. You’re a special case.”

  “I’ll take that as a compliment,” Sienne said.

  18

  Sienne had heard of the Kondylus Amphitheatre, named for a long-dead king of Rafellin, but had never visited. This was mostly because she’d been warned about how dangerous it was. Once it had been a popular venue for open-air theater, where the rich and powerful of Fioretti promenaded. They ostensibly went to watch the plays, but Sienne was sure they’d been more interested in being seen, since she doubted human nature had changed much in the last century. Now, however, the popular entertainment in the big city was small, intimate salons with good conversation, a trend her own mother had imported to Beneddo, and the amphitheater was an overgrown stone pavilion no one used anymore. No one, that is, but homeless men and women who took over the many sheltered alcoves when night fell, and hard-eyed criminals who made unsavory deals in the bright light of day. Sienne hadn’t needed more than one warning to stay away.

  But entering the amphitheater surrounded by her friends was quite different from going in alone. Alaric strode confidently past the many hedge-bounded booths, some of which were still occupied even at eleven o’clock in the morning, and headed straight for the back of the stage. Its floor of aged oak beams hadn’t been varnished in eighty years, but no rot had set in, and they didn’t so much as creak under his weight. Sienne took a few steps to the side and tried to imagine declaiming blank verse to an audience of thousands, or being lowered from the high ceiling to portray an avatar of God.

  “Holla, girlie. What are you doing here?”

  Sienne turned to see three men approaching from the side of the stage. They were unshaven, their clothes unkempt, and all three had nasty smiles that said they were interested in making her life unpleasant. “It’s a public place,” she said, but took a step backward toward her companions. More loudly, she said, “Isn’t that right? It’s a public place?”

  “What?” Alaric said. She didn’t dare take her eyes off the three men to see if he’d noticed them. “Oh. We’re not going to have any trouble, are we?”

  “Not if you leave now,” said the same man. One of his eyes moved in a funny way, and Sienne realized it was glass. “We have business to attend to.”

  “It’s a big amphitheater. We’ll carry on here and you can take whatever other spot you like.” Alaric took a few steps to put himself between the men and Sienne. She was just as happy not to have to look at them.

  “We was here first.”

  Sienne had heard somewhere that the myth of the criminal mastermind really was more or less a myth, because most criminals were stupid, hence their becoming criminals. These men seemed to be proof of that statement. They were outnumbered, facing down someone who could probably crush their heads with a squeeze of his massive hands, and they still wanted to brazen it out? Sienne thought about pulling out her spellbook, but decided that might make things needlessly complicated. Sometimes you had to let the fighters take charge.

  Kalanath and Dianthe came forward to flank Alaric on either side. “Who are these?” Kalanath said.

  “Just some businessmen who are leaving now,” Alaric said.

  Sienne heard the rasp of a sword being drawn. “I think it’s you who’ll be leaving,” a different man said.

  Faster than thought, Kalanath whipped his staff around in a complicated maneuver. There was a ringing sound as the man’s sword hit the floor, and a thud, and a groan. “I think it is not,” Kalanath said. “I do not like bullies. You will take yourself to another place now.”

  Sienne peeked between Alaric and Dianthe. Two of the men were helping a third rise. He reached for his sword, and Dianthe kicked it neatly out of the way, sending it skittering across the uneven oak flooring. “Fetch.”

  The three men glared. One of them said, “You—” He looked at Alaric, whose face Sienne couldn’t see, and changed his mind. The three men turned and walked away, stopping only to retrieve the sword.

  Slow applause from behind her made her turn. Perrin was clapping, a wry smile touching his lips. “Very bracing, to begin our little adventure with a near-foray into fisticuffs,” he said. His eyes were squinted nearly shut as if the light hurt them. Sienne had smelled stale brandy on him when they’d arrived at his lodgings half an hour before and suspected he’d continued getting drunk after they’d left him that night. She tried not to think uncharitable things, but it was hard not to worry, even though she guessed if she expressed that worry, he’d become sarcastic to fend her off.

  “Sorry about that,” Alaric said. “I didn’t think anyone would be so bold as to come after us. Is this too public a place? We can find somewhere else. Maybe we should start at Neoma’s shop instead.”

  Perrin waved a dismissive hand. “Averran would say it is the drunks and scoundrels who are closest to the divine wisdom. Personally, I think Averran was having everyone on when he said that, as wisdom is not something I believe those three thugs are conversant with.”

  He turned in a wide circle, scuffing the planks with his toe, then settled into a cross-legged position and laid a handful of rice papers in his lap. “Please do not hover. You may sit near, or stand afar, but in either case I will need your silence. This is not a prayer I have made before.”

  They all backed about ten feet away. Perrin nodded and closed his eyes, resting his hands loosely on his knees. For a few moments, all he did was breathe deeply, in through the nose, out through the mouth, his chest rising and falling in slow rhythm. Sienne gripped the edges of her spellbook through her vest to keep her hands still. She’d never realized she was a fidgeter until she’d seen Perrin pray.

  Perrin drew in a deep breath. “O mighty Lord of crotchets, it is your servant again. This morning I have only one request,
and it is an exceptional one. Perceive, if you will, the pendant I envision now. It appears to be at the center of a widening circle of death and deception. My companions and I are responsible for returning it to the world, and we feel a further responsibility for repairing the damage those who possess it have caused, and likely will continue to cause.”

  He paused, as if he was listening to a voice none of them could hear. “I know it is not your way to provide answers when it is the pursuit of the question that makes us better people. Did you not say, ‘It is for man to find the path, and when there is no path, to forge one’? I do not wish for you to put the evildoers into my power. I simply ask for guidance to locate the pendant. A trail to follow, as it were. I know not what may be at the end of the trail, but I assure you, o Lord of pestilential bad humor, that I will do my utmost to make of your blessing what I may. As always, I leave it to you—”

  He went silent. Then he swayed as if he were about to pass out. Dianthe took a step forward, but halted when Alaric put a hand on her arm. A trickle of blood ran from Perrin’s nostril, and his jaw was locked tight. “My Lord, it is for you to decide,” he murmured through clenched teeth, “but you have always said persistence leads to wisdom, and wisdom leads to God, so by your leave I will ask again until—” He gasped. “Until I am satisfied.” Tears leaked from beneath his closed eyelids, and he clenched his hands tightly enough that his knuckles showed white. Sienne’s chest ached from holding her breath.

  The papers in Perrin’s lap sizzled and smoked with a white smoke that reeked of jasmine and sharp mint. Perrin opened his eyes. “Thank you, Lord,” he said, and sagged, not quite fainting. Sienne and Kalanath rushed to support him. “I am well,” he said. He wiped his nose with the back of his hand, smearing blood across his cheek. “I do not think I have ever pitted my will against an avatar’s before. I cannot recommend it.”

  “Did it work?” Alaric said.

  “I think so.” Perrin sorted through the charred papers in his lap. “Healing…protection…Averran seems to think we are setting out on a scrapping expedition. Another healing. One similar but not identical to the blessing that revealed the ritual in the keep, very interesting. Something I do not recognize.” He held out one that was, by contrast to the usual complex sigils of his blessings, a simple curved shape like half a crescent moon from which depended an angular, irregular shape like a warped bean. “And one location blessing.”

  Dianthe let out a relieved sigh. “So how do we use it?”

  “It is as I have said. Invoking the blessing produces a stone one swallows, and then one is guided in some way to the object or person of one’s desire.” Perrin folded the other blessings away into his pocket. “I have never done it before, so that is as specific as I may be.”

  Alaric checked his watch. “It’s half past eleven. Is there any reason we can’t do it now?”

  “We will have no time to stop for a meal. The location blessing lasts for no more than three hours.”

  “I don’t think I could eat, I’m too eager,” Dianthe said.

  “Nor I,” said Kalanath. “Better we do this now.”

  Sienne nodded agreement.

  “Then…whenever you’re ready,” Alaric said.

  Perrin nodded. He held the rice paper by one corner over his cupped hand, bent his head, and murmured, “Stop being a cranky bastard and be useful for once.” The paper flared into blue flame, but instead of disappearing, it shriveled into a compact wad of fibers crackling with fire. Then the fire went out, and something small and blue dropped into Perrin’s hand. He displayed it to the others. It was a round, faceted stone, pale blue and milky like the true summer sky, and no bigger than his pinky nail. Perrin took out his flask. “Fortune favors the foolish,” he said, and popped the stone into his mouth. Swiftly he drank from the flask, wincing. “Very bitter.”

  They stood watching him for nearly a minute. “Don’t you feel anything?” Sienne asked.

  Perrin shook his head. “But it can take a few minutes to become effective.” A strange, reflective look crossed his face. “I feel rather warm.”

  “It’s a hot day,” Alaric said.

  “It is not that kind of warmth. It is…as if I had a live coal in my chest. But that would be painful, and this is not.” Perrin took a few steps toward Alaric, who stepped aside, looking alarmed. “I think…”

  “Yes?” Dianthe said.

  He paced around the stage in a wide, irregular circle, his brow wrinkled. “The heat fades when I am here, and grows when I am here,” he said, coming to a stop near the western edge. “I believe I have a trail.”

  “Then let’s follow it,” Alaric said.

  Perrin had already leaped the short distance off the stage and was striding away through the low-walled alcoves. A furtive figure crawled out of one and scurried away at his approach, but Perrin ignored it. After a moment’s startled pause, the others ran after him. “Slow down,” Sienne said.

  “I feel if I slow, I will lose the thread,” Perrin said. His voice was distant, abstracted, as if half his attention were elsewhere. “It is…quite the compulsion.”

  The amphitheater was surrounded by public parkland, not as seedy as the amphitheater but still not a place Sienne would have felt comfortable walking in alone. Perrin crossed it in a direct line, ignoring the gravel paths and once coming up short against a high shrubbery wall. He looked at it in surprise at its very existence.

  “Around,” Alaric said, grabbing Perrin’s arm and steering him to the right.

  “I hope this is not a mistake,” Perrin said. “Averran might consider it a denial of his gift.”

  “Averran can’t expect you to walk through walls,” Dianthe said. “We can only stay as close to the path as possible, and hope that’s good enough.”

  The detour did not destroy whatever link Perrin had to the pendant; he picked up the trail immediately. After a few minutes, they left the parkland behind for the same run-down district Neoma’s shop was in. Perrin walked half the length of one of the quiet, well-scrubbed streets before stopping. “The path is in a direct line that gives no heed to buildings. We will have to detour frequently.”

  “You walk, and we’ll steer,” Dianthe said, taking his arm.

  “Very well.” He crossed the street, ignoring the oxcart that rumbled toward them. Sienne, at the end of their procession, had to dart around it and, cursing, ran hard to catch up.

  She lost track of where they were and had to work at not losing sight of her friends. If they were separated, it would take her forever to find familiar territory again. The impoverished district gave way to the industrial sector, where all the smelly and noisy businesses a city depended on were tucked away out of sight. The smells of the tanneries and abattoirs made Sienne grateful they hadn’t stopped for a meal. Perrin seemed to be rapt in a world of his own, because once he attempted to walk through a slaughterhouse yard and was only deterred by Dianthe hauling back on his arm. Kalanath turned his back on the sight, looking unexpectedly squeamish. Alaric nudged Perrin. “Left, or right?”

  Perrin closed his eyes. “Left,” he said, and they were off again.

  After about an hour of following Perrin’s erratic trail, Alaric said, “We’ve been heading gradually uphill, through increasingly wealthy neighborhoods.”

  “Yes, and I don’t like the way these people keep looking at us, like we’re criminals casing their estates,” Dianthe said. “Are we getting any closer?”

  “I have felt neither increase nor diminution in the strength of the pull,” Perrin said. “I fear we will know we have found it only when we are atop it.”

  “That is a problem,” Kalanath said. “It is likely the thieves will be with the pendant.”

  “I don’t see a problem,” Alaric said, flexing his fists.

  “It’s a problem if the thieves are working for someone else who isn’t there,” Dianthe pointed out. “If—watch it!” She stopped Perrin from crossing the street directly in the path of a carriage going faster tha
n was strictly safe. “If we burst in on them, we might not learn who’s really responsible.”

  Perrin continued across the street, his eyes half-lidded against the sun’s brightness. “Walk as if you had business here, and we will be unmolested.”

  “That only works most of the time. We’re not dressed right for this neighborhood,” Dianthe said.

  Alaric looked around. “This is not good.”

  “We just have to keep moving,” Dianthe assured him.

  “That’s not what I mean. This street is familiar. We’re almost to Master Fontanna’s home.”

  Dianthe brought Perrin to a stop, provoking a cry of rebuke. “You don’t think…”

  “He was upset that we wouldn’t sell him the other artifacts,” Sienne said.

  “If it is Master Fontanna, we will know soon enough,” Perrin said, wrenching away from Dianthe and proceeding rapidly up the hill.

  They trotted after him. Sienne soon recognized the gray-streaked white marble of Master Fontanna’s manor. Perrin’s path took him directly toward it. Sienne’s heart fell. She’d liked Master Fontanna, clammy hands aside, and she couldn’t imagine how Alaric and Dianthe felt, having worked for him many times before.

  Alaric strode ahead of Perrin and put his hand on the gate to the manor. Perrin ignored him and kept walking. “This isn’t it?” Alaric said.

  Perrin glanced at the manor. “The pull is from somewhere ahead.”

  Alaric and Dianthe looked relieved. Sienne only felt confused. If not Master Fontanna, who?

  They continued walking. Sienne’s legs burned from climbing. “We’re almost out of street,” Alaric said. “Could they have gone into the hills beyond the city?”

  They were passing a manor surrounded by a shoulder-high yew hedge, trimmed off sharply across its flat top. Perrin suddenly turned left and tried to walk through the hedge. “It is near,” he said. “I felt a pulse as of a heartbeat.”