Company of Strangers, #1

by Melissa McShane

  The priest, Callia, made a tiny face of disgust. “This is the last time I will allow myself mental contact with him. His mind is a sewer. Even Conn Giorda was less offensive.”

  Sienne struggled to sit up and was pushed back down by the wizard. “No, lie down,” he said. “You may not have your spellbook, but I don’t think that makes you helpless. Using sepolisya on my spellbook was clever. Fortunately Callia was able to rid the book of the magic, or I might still be struggling with it.”

  Sienne lay still and assessed what she could see of her surroundings. The sofa she lay on was near the spiral staircase, facing into the room. If she craned her head, she could barely see the grouping of four armchairs Liurdi and his conspirators had been sitting in the first time. Ahead of her, near the center of the room, stood the boxy table now clearly identifiable as an old trunk. Sienne wasn’t sure how Dianthe could tell its actual age, but it was very old. Someone had removed the blue silk it had formerly been draped with. Its lid was deep, and from Sienne’s position she could see the heavy black iron hinges, shaped like upside-down bat wings. As Dianthe had said, the wood had that same slightly greasy look the beams in the keep had had. More invulnerable objects. Liurdi must be heartily sick of the spell by now.

  The wizard turned away and crossed the room to sit in one of the armchairs, setting his spellbook on the floor next to it. After a moment, Raene went to join him. Liurdi crossed behind Sienne, and she arched her back to watch him. He was closing the gaps in the dome with huge folding shutters that blocked out the rest of the starlit sky. No one was paying any attention to her. Well, she wasn’t going to lie there waiting to be returned to Master Tersus’s house. She wiggled her fingers and managed to touch the rope binding her wrists. She was barefoot, so she had no helpful boot knife to cut herself free, but she’d been able to move it with her invisible fingers without seeing it, so maybe…

  She focused on the rope, trying to picture how it went around her wrists, and envisioned hands plucking at it, loosening its knots and sliding it free of the loops. Her actual fingers were growing numb, and she had no idea how successful her attempt was until she felt something thin slither across her hand. It was working! She controlled her excitement and focused on that loose strand. Up and around, back through a loop and under. She shifted her position slightly to hide her hands between the sofa and her back. She felt the other end of the rope free itself and join the first in its slithering dance. She flexed her wrists and the rope gave, just a bit, but enough that she could work feeling back into her fingers.

  “It’s taking far too long,” Liurdi complained. Sienne froze. The rope was looped loosely around her wrists now, not binding her at all, but it might be good enough for a cursory glance if Liurdi was inclined to look. Her arms ached from holding this position and her mouth was dry.

  “Batagli says he has worked out where the key is kept, and will retrieve it now,” Callia said. “I can see very little because it is dark where he is, but I think he is in the big man’s room.”

  “We’re so close,” Raene said. “Just think of what treasures the trunk might contain!”

  Sienne wondered why they hadn’t had Callia do some kind of blessing to reveal the trunk’s contents, and almost asked the question before remembering she didn’t want them paying too close attention to her. She looked around for something else she might do, anything to spike their plans. It was probably futile, but she wasn’t going to be a helpless victim.

  Her eye was drawn to the spellbook lying on the floor, right at the limits of her vision. Sienne had been taught to treat her book with care, which included not putting it face-first on what was probably a dirty floor. The wizard might know more spells than she, but he certainly wasn’t respectful of them. Idly, just to see if it was possible, she worked the complicated clasp that held the spine to the pages with her invisible fingers, and saw the book’s back cover flex once as the latch disengaged. She glanced at the wizard. He had his attention on Liurdi, closing the final pair of shutters, and hadn’t noticed.

  The room felt stuffy already, but closing it off made it feel even warmer. The candlelight reflecting off the shutters made the room brighter as well. The shutters were painted to fit the rest of the night sky, filling in the gaps and completing some of the constellations picked out in gold paint. Directly across from Sienne was the Weaver, his right arm raised high above his loom. It was one of the constellations Sienne felt required the most imagination to perceive.

  Callia cursed and opened her eyes. “The fool,” she said. “He’s been caught.”

  Sienne stifled an exclamation of excitement. The others groaned. The wizard and Raene left their chairs to join Callia and Liurdi near the trunk. “It’s not a disaster yet,” Liurdi told them. “We still have the girl. We can offer an exchange.”

  “Batagli says he hasn’t told them anything yet. We need to give him instructions,” Callia said.

  Sienne stopped listening. The wizard’s spellbook lay alone and untended on the floor. Swiftly she opened it, leaving the binding exposed and the pages loose. With her invisible fingers, she whisked the topmost page—technically the last one in the book—away from the others and sent it gliding along the floor in a curve that kept it away from the conspirators. It slid neatly beneath the sofa she lay on, perfectly silent. She took the next page, and the next, and the next, slipping them to join the first beneath her.

  “Then that’s what we’ll do,” Liurdi said. Sienne quickly shut the spellbook and engaged the latch. She probably should have been listening to their plan, but the idea of giving that wizard a metaphorical slap to the face was too tempting to ignore.

  Liurdi and the wizard came to stand beside her. “Why don’t you send me back? Your man’s failed, hasn’t he?” Sienne said.

  “Batagli is more valuable where he is,” Liurdi said. “Just as you are now significantly more valuable to us here.”

  “Alaric won’t exchange the key for me. He doesn’t like wizards. He only kept me around because Dianthe made him.”

  “Alaric? The Ansorjan madman?” Liurdi’s eyes lit with interest. “Callia, tell Batagli to say nothing more until we give the word.” He crouched to bring himself nearly to eye level with Sienne. “Is it true he searches for rituals?”

  Sienne thought about saying nothing, then decided there was no harm in confirming what everyone seemed to know. “Yes.”

  Liurdi’s nasty smile returned. “Then I have something he will want far more than he does a useless key. More than he wants you, apparently.”

  “You killed his friend to get that key. He won’t give it to you. That would be a betrayal of her.”

  “We’ll see. Callia, tell Batagli to offer Alaric a trade.”

  “He doesn’t know who Alaric is.”

  “The Ansorjan. Tell him to say I’ll give them the Dardel Contract in exchange for the key.”

  Callia shrugged and closed her eyes again. It was fascinating to watch her, Sienne thought, because her every emotion and every thought was clear on her face. There was puzzlement, irritation, and disgust, probably at having to make mental contact with Batagli. How did it feel, speaking mind to mind with someone? Did you know all their thoughts and feelings, or was it more like a spoken conversation without sound? It certainly sounded intimate, which would be unpleasant if you didn’t like the person you were talking to.

  Once again the other three focused on Callia, and Sienne took the opportunity to untie the ribbon cinching her left sleeve to her wrist and loosen it. With her invisible fingers, she squared up the pages she’d stolen from the spellbook and carefully brought them up over the armrest near her feet. They slid smoothly between her legs and the sofa back without drawing any attention. Holding open the wrist of her nightdress, she curled the pages into a half-tube and slid them up around her wrist and forearm, their sharp edges scraping her skin painfully but not drawing blood. The tube fell open when she released it, constrained only by the sleeve, and she quickly tied the ribbon tight to keep
the pages from sliding back out. It would be obvious something was there, but she didn’t intend to let her captors get a good look at her arms.

  “—have to come here to get it,” Liurdi was saying, and Sienne realized that in her concentration she’d missed yet another probably important conversation. What was the Dardel Contract, and why was Liurdi sure Alaric would think it valuable enough to exchange the key for it?

  “If he’s smart, he’ll want a neutral location for the exchange,” the wizard said.

  “He doesn’t have a reputation as a smart man,” Liurdi said. “I understand he’s rather obsessive in his quest. We can use that.” He turned and strode to the staircase, disappearing down it.

  Sienne wanted to laugh. Alaric, not intelligent? Just because he was big and well-muscled? She wondered if he traded on that misperception often, to have such a reputation.

  Callia closed her eyes again. “They’ve shut him into a closet while they deliberate. This could take a while.”

  “I hope not,” the wizard said. “I’m tired of waiting. You, girl, what’s your name?”

  Sienne realized he’d addressed her and once again debated the value of staying silent. “Sienne,” she finally said.

  “Sienne. Why are you working with this fool? You’re clever, you have potential.”

  “That’s what Conn Giorda said, right before I spat in his face,” Sienne said.

  Raene laughed. The wizard’s smile was genuinely amused now, not at all cruel. “And perceptive,” he said. “So, again, I have to ask—why do you associate with this Alaric? I assume you’re a scrapper. You may be a beginner, but I can’t imagine you couldn’t find other work.”

  “It paid well,” Sienne said.

  “I see. I imagine that’s important to someone in your position, just starting out.”

  “What makes you think I’m just starting out?”

  The wizard chuckled. “Sepolisya was clever, but not something an experienced wizard would have gone for if she had access to anything better. You were just lucky.”

  Sienne wanted to say And you were slow, but didn’t think it was a good idea to antagonize her captor. She said nothing. The wizard added, “It’s almost too bad this is all over, or we might have work for you. You’re certainly more qualified than the Giordas, and less personally repugnant than Batagli.”

  “What is ‘this’?” Sienne asked.

  The wizard’s lips thinned, and he went silent. Feet sounded on the iron staircase, and Liurdi appeared, carrying a folio the size of his chest. It was bound in black leather with silver fittings at the corners and a strap locking it shut. “Go ahead and tell her,” he said.

  “I’d rather not. It’s your venture, ultimately.”

  Liurdi gestured at the trunk. “I bought this from a scrapper team five years ago, retrieved from a ruined keep north of here. Only the ancients were able to make anything this size invulnerable, and I knew immediately it contained something valuable. Callia’s divinations revealed it was heavily warded, requiring the key to open it without destroying the contents. So we began searching for the key.”

  “Should you be telling her this?” Raene said. “We haven’t succeeded yet.”

  “What can it hurt?” Liurdi’s eyes blazed with excitement. He had the look of someone who’d been dying to share his genius with the world for far too long. “Most of our searches went down false paths. We…acquired…any number of items we wrongly believed to be the key. We tried to send more scrapper teams to the ruin, but no one was interested once it had been stripped bare. Then the Giordas came to us. They’d heard of our interest in the ruin and proposed to search it for us.”

  “By way of ambushing another team,” the wizard said sourly. “Typical.”

  Liurdi waved this off. “However they went about it, they uncovered the key and then lost it. Apparently the other team turned their ambush on them.”

  Sienne wanted to leap to her feet and tell them what had really happened. Outrage nearly propelled her upright before she remembered she was pretending to be a captive. Besides, it sounded as if they didn’t know Sienne’s team was the one that had discovered the pendant, and that was the sort of information she didn’t need to share. “And you killed Neoma and took the pendant,” she said.

  “We didn’t kill anyone. That was the Giordas,” Liurdi said.

  “But you were responsible for sending them after her. That still makes you guilty.”

  “Not according to Rafellish law.” Liurdi’s smug expression made her wish she could hit him with something. “It’s not our fault if our subordinates have been somewhat…overenthusiastic in their interpretation of—”

  “Batagli’s back,” Callia said. Liurdi strode to her side. “He says…they’re willing to make the trade. The book for the key, and Batagli for the girl.”

  The book? The Dardel Contract was a book? Of course. The folio. Sienne almost sat up, and wriggled more deeply into the sofa instead. “Did they name a location?” Liurdi asked.

  Callia smiled, her eyes still closed. “The fool is coming here. No neutral location, no guarantees of his safety. But he wants to see us open the trunk.”

  That sounded wrong. Alaric was too smart to walk back into the lion’s den, and he didn’t give a damn what was in the trunk. He must have some other plan. The edges of the spellbook pages dug into the inside of Sienne’s elbow, but she couldn’t shift position without drawing attention to them, because the four conspirators were all looking at her. “I suppose, if she’s his companion, even temporarily, it would look bad for him not to redeem her,” Raene said.

  “Or maybe he just doesn’t like losing,” Sienne said. They all laughed.

  “If he gives up the key in exchange for that worthless book, he’s already a loser,” Liurdi said.

  “So you’ve lied and cheated to get this key, and probably stolen and murdered as well,” Sienne said through her teeth. “I hope the damn thing is empty, and you get nothing.”

  “Delanie assures us what is inside will more than compensate us for our trouble,” Callia said.

  “But she won’t tell you the details? Are you sure you’re asking the right questions?” It came out before Sienne could shut herself up. She really couldn’t stay quiet in the face of injustice, could she? But no one struck her for her insolence, or grabbed her to reveal her unbound wrists or the stolen pages.

  “Delanie prizes knowledge, and the search for knowledge,” Callia said. “She knows the joy of discovery. Telling us the contents would ruin the surprise.” She closed her eyes, frowning. “They’ve blindfolded Batagli. Stupid, since it’s not as if he doesn’t know the way to this place. He says they’re on their way. He and the Ansorjan.”

  “Batagli is a liability,” the wizard said. “He bragged too much. If they link his crimes to us—”

  “Alaric is too obsessed with his personal quest to care about our crimes,” Liurdi said. “But you’re right, we should dispose of him. Of both of them.”

  “I can make him disappear like I did the Wrathen thieves,” the wizard said.

  “Shut up, you fool, the girl’s listening,” Raene said.

  “As if she can do anything about it. I think—”

  “I know what you think, and I agree,” Liurdi said. “But Alaric is a powerful fighter, even if he is a madman. We’ll give him the book, take the key, then do away with him.”

  “What about the girl?”

  Liurdi turned to Sienne. “She’ll have to go, too. Pity, since she’s not guilty of anything but choosing the wrong side.”

  The wizard looked like he wanted to argue, but subsided. Sienne realized she was holding her breath and let it out slowly. Alaric was taking an awful risk. He didn’t even know if she was still alive, didn’t know if they meant to be honorable, and now he was walking into their center of power. Maybe she was wrong about him. Maybe he was so obsessed with finding ritual he’d lost his common sense. They were both going to die if that was the case. She closed her eyes. O Lord Averr
an, she prayed, if Perrin is right, and you care about our success, please don’t let Alaric walk into a trap.

  They waited. Sienne started to need to relieve herself. She stayed quiet. If they planned to kill her, they probably didn’t care about her physical comfort. The wizard settled in a chair, tilted his head back, and went to sleep. Callia sat near him, flicking through her riffle of blue blessing papers. Liurdi and Raene sat at a table and played cards, though Sienne couldn’t tell what game it was. Sienne distracted herself from her fears by wondering what spells she’d stolen from the wizard. If he organized his spells by language, then in order of difficulty, she might have some very powerful spells indeed. If he was more typical and just added them in as he got them…well, if he was as experienced as he seemed, they might still be powerful spells. In either case, it was unlikely they were ones she already had. Not that it mattered, if they killed her. What time was it, anyway? Surely after midnight.

  Metallic footsteps sounded on the stairs, gradually growing louder. The woman servant who’d let Sienne and her friends into the manor a few hours earlier emerged through the hole in the floor. “My lords and ladies, there is a person here to see you,” she said, managing to make “person” sound equivalent to “scum.”

  “Show him up, then leave us,” Liurdi commanded.

  Sienne tried to relax, but her heart was beating painfully fast and it was harder to keep her hands concealed behind her back. The woman’s footsteps receded. The impulse to race after her, to find Alaric and warn him it was all a hoax, was so strong Sienne had to shut her eyes against it. Alaric wasn’t stupid. She just needed to be alert, because if he had a plan, she was surely a part of it, and she had to pay attention to find out what part that was.

  A hand descended on her shoulder. “Sit up,” Raene said. “And don’t say anything.” The point of a dagger pricked Sienne between the ribs. Sienne struggled to sit without the use of her hands and felt one of the rope’s coils slip down. She pulled her wrists close against the small of her back to prevent any more movement, but Raene didn’t notice; she had her attention on the stairs, where the sound of footsteps came once more. Two sets of feet, one heavier than the other. Sienne made herself breathe calmly. All right, she was in her nightdress, barefoot, and surrounded by enemies, with no spellbook and a knife to her side, but that didn’t make her helpless. Whatever came next, she was ready.