She came up behind Tane and Tinga quietly—they didn’t look like they wanted to be noticed, and until she knew exactly what they were doing, she thought it best to respect that instinct. Kadka and Berken followed her lead.
“Tane,” she said softly as she neared. Both Tane and Tinga turned at the sound.
“You found us,” Tane said.
“You weren’t hard to find, unlike some people,” Indree answered. “Urnt, for instance. Or Endo. You said you’d explain, so why are we here, and how is it getting us closer to them?”
Tinga spoke first, crossing her arms and jutting her chin out stubbornly toward Berken. “She shouldn’t be here. This doesn’t work with her.”
Indree frowned. “What doesn’t work? You haven’t—”
Tinga grabbed her by the arm. “We need to talk. Audlanders only.” She shot Berken a withering glare. “You stay.”
Indree gave Berken a helpless look. “I’ll work this out. Can you just… wait, for a minute?”
Berken sighed and gave a weary nod. “If I must. It seems a small concession after everything else. But I hope you all understand that I will not let… whatever this is go ahead until I know what you mean to do. I draw the line at that.”
“Keep an eye on the intersection, while you’re waiting,” said Tane. “Call us if you notice anyone lingering.”
Berken just gave him a curt nod, and waved them away. Tinga led Indree down the alley, and Tane and Kadka followed.
When they’d moved out of earshot, Tinga turned to look at Indree. “She has to go. Tell her, Tane.”
Indree raised an eyebrow at Tane. “Please do.”
“It’s like this,” said Tane. “The spokesman at the residence admitted they’d been working with Endo, but he figures that they’re being misled. He wants out. So we promised—or Tinga did, but I agree with her—that we’d keep his people out of it in exchange for his help finding Endo. He sent out a runner for us to follow here. This is where they drop messages. It’s under a loose panel in the base of the lamppost. We’re waiting for someone to pick it up.”
Indree took that in, mulled it over for a moment. “So they were responsible for the sabotage.”
“They were trying to free themselves,” Tinga said, her eyes flashing with passion. “You should see what it’s like in there. They listened to the wrong man, but they had good reason to. Do you want to be responsible for what will happen to them if anyone finds out they were part of this? It won’t just be the mages who did it that suffer.”
Indree held up her hands. “I’m not fighting you on that, Tinga. If I’d been born here, I’d be in there with them. I understand why you want to protect them. I do too.” Except if it’s between turning them in or going to war with Belgrier, I’m not sure what my choice is. That wasn’t a fight worth picking until she had to, though, and if they did this right, she might never have to. “But if we find Endo, we can’t be sure he won’t be ready for us. Berken can call in help we might need. If we let her stay and just don’t tell her what we don’t want her to know, isn’t that enough?”
Tinga shook her head. “The problem is there might be people with Endo. Relatives of the mages in the workhouse. He uses them to carry messages freely in and out of the residence. He’s told them he can give them magic somehow, so they can help Audland when we come marching in to free everyone. If they get caught helping him, the secret is out.”
Indree rubbed her forehead. “Of course. Astra, it would just be nice to walk into danger with the numbers on our side for once.” She glanced over her shoulder at Berken. “So we can’t bring in backup. But we can’t get rid of Berken either. She’s not going to leave now that she’s here and she’s seen us acting secretive. I think… she might be convinced to let some things go if it means bringing Endo in. She’s already let me get away with more today than she should have. She wants this case solved.”
“Fights to save Klenn, too,” Kadka offered. “Is not bad, for Belgrian.”
Tinga looked from one of them to the other and finally uncrossed her arms. “Fine. You can try. But only because she’s already here. And if I don’t like what she says, I’m not taking her anywhere. She’s not going to put anyone in prison for trying to get their families out of the workhouses. I’ll give us away to whoever comes for that message first.”
“Fair enough,” Indree said. “I think she’ll convince you.” She didn’t say it, but she was ready to ignore Tinga’s wishes if she had to. There were bigger things at stake here than a few people who had decided to work with Endo Stooke, as sympathetic as their reasons might be. Still, easier if everyone was on the same page. Tinga would probably follow through on her threat if she thought she had to; the girl was stubborn. And maybe right. But being right wouldn’t stop Endo from starting a war.
“Well, let’s go see if she can live up to your exacting standards,” said Tane. “We’re working against the clock here.”
Berken was waiting for them when they returned, an expectant look on her face. “No one has stopped yet. Will you tell me what we are looking for?”
“Someone retrieving a message for Endo Stooke from that lamppost,” said Indree, and gestured across the intersection.
“Ah.” Berken nodded in understanding. “So we will follow this messenger back to his master.”
“In theory,” Indree said. She had some ideas about that, but she had to get Berken to go along first. I’m just not sure how to do that part. “There is a… complication. We have reason to believe that there might be others like this messenger with Endo when we find him. People he’s lied to. People you might be able to link back to mages in the workhouse where the Gerthine was built.”
Berken frowned. “You are telling me that the workers are in league with—”
“Those workers were looking for a way out of actual slavery,” Tinga interjected indignantly. “And if you want this solved, you’re going to let them go and put the blame on Endo, where it belongs.”
Indree shot Tinga a chastizing look. “What Tinga means is that these people are not the real threat. They were lied to, and we don’t want them to suffer unduly for it. We need to focus on stopping Endo right now.”
Berken looked at Tinga for a long moment, and then raised her eyes to meet Indree’s. “I have dedicated my life to the Belgrian Guard. It is my duty to see that no mage’s power is allowed to go unchecked.”
Astra, don’t do this, Berken. “Lieutenant, please—”
At the same moment, Tinga blurted, “I told you—”
Berken cut them both off. “But I have seen… another side of magic these past days. And it is the man responsible for all of this who is truly abusing his power.” She took a long breath, and then, “These accomplices are not mages themselves. Endo Stooke is. He must be my priority. It would not be an explicit failure of my duty if the rest were to slip away in the confusion. Unfortunate, but there would be no way to properly identify them afterward.”
Indree didn’t say anything at first—it took her a moment to register what she’d heard. And then a slow smile pulled at the corners of her mouth. “These things happen on the job. Nothing to be done about it.” She glanced at Tinga, raised a questioning eyebrow.
Tinga was still regarding Berken warily. “I don’t know. How can we be sure she’s not just saying that to get us to lead her there?”
Berken sighed. “Allow me to move this along. We cannot delay here any longer.” She reached down to her belt.
“What are you doing?” Tinga demanded. “Hands at your sides!”
Even Indree was mildly alarmed. She shifted her hand to her baton, fixed a shielding spell in her mind.
Berken raised her free hand, palm out. “I mean no harm.” She removed the anti-magic cuffs and the nullifier artifact from her belt, and extended them to Indree. “I am choosing to trust you, Inspector Lovial, because I believe you when you say that the Guard is ill-prepared to deal with this threat. I hope this will convince your friends that you may trust m
e in return. If I decide to break faith, I will have no way to defend against your magic. I think we can agree that you are more than capable of dealing with me under those circumstances.”
Indree accepted the artifacts with some surprise. She wasn’t sure she’d have gone so far, alone and outnumbered by agents of a country that she’d been told all her life was a danger to her own. It took guts, at the very least. “That’s good enough for me. Tinga?”
“I suppose.” Tinga said. She crossed her arms and jutted her chin out at Berken. “But don’t get any ideas. I’m watching you.”
Indree let out the breath she didn’t realize she’d been holding. Bless her suspicious little heart. “Don’t take that lightly, Lieutenant Berken. Tinga may be small, but she’s… formidable. I wouldn’t want to get on her bad side.” She tucked the cuffs into her belt and tossed the nullifier to Tane. He didn’t have his usual complement of charms; she didn’t like the idea of him going into this without any kind of protection. “Here, this might be useful. Now, let’s talk strategy.”
Berken got directly to business. “You must see that there is a problem with your plan. They are not likely to send someone out to retrieve this message while they are meeting—the security risk would be too great. And if we wait, we will miss our chance. If we suspect that Chancellor Urnt is with Endo Stooke, we need to apprehend him in the act of collaboration. We cannot accuse the Kaiser’s chancellor with anything less.” She’d just made a decision that couldn’t have been easy for her, but now that it was made, she wasn’t wasting time with hesitation. They might have been enemies under slightly different circumstances, but even so it was hard not to respect the woman.
“I’ve been thinking the same thing,” Indree said. “And I have an idea. I was able to get an Astral signature on Stennig even though he was being controlled. I should be able to do the same with Urnt. We have to be close now, and in a country with so few mages they may not have felt the need for a deep masking. I might be able to get enough of a direction with the focus from Klenn’s carriage to take us the rest of the way.”
Berken just inclined her head. Apparently she wasn’t going to draw the line at a divination after everything else she’d overlooked today.
“It’s worth a try,” Tane said, and squeezed her shoulder. “If anyone can push through a masking, you can. You’ve done it before.”
“Well,” said Indree, “the last time it was Randolf Cranst leading us into a trap, to be fair.”
Tane spread his hands and grinned slightly at her. “Sure, but what are the odds of that happening again?”
Indree snorted, but it was the best option they had, so she did it anyway. She reached into her pocket for the hair she’d retrieved from Klenn’s carriage, carefully folded up in a handkerchief he’d provided. Focusing her mind, she reached out to the Astra, using the hair as a focus.
Her awareness dropped away, replaced by a vast web of silver-blue force, woven in and around the world her eyes could see. She extended her senses along those strands of magic, seeking, but found only a haze of dissipated Astral energy. The masking, spreading Urnt’s signature across the city like smoke on the wind, so that it was impossible to pinpoint his location. She touched her focus, shaping a cast of Urnt’s presence in the Astra, and gathered the drifting fragments of his signature into it. The masking fought, the Astra trying to serve two wills at once, but her vessel gathered just enough of an impression of the man to tug her vaguely southward. A stronger spell might have stopped her, but as she’d hoped, this seemed more like a cursory precaution than anything. It couldn’t fully deflect a concentrated effort with a divination focus, not when she was relatively close to the source.
“This way,” she said, letting her senses return to the outside world. “I’ve got something.”
They followed her down the narrow, snow-piled streets of Belgrier’s non-human district, and she followed her divination, dividing her attention between two planes. It was always strange, straddling that line. It made the physical world feel distant, illusory, an image set over the true reality of the Astra. Some mages went mad chasing that feeling, looking for some sort of absolute truth behind everything.
Indree didn’t have that problem. In her experience, the answers of the Astra were no truer than any. It was the rush of it that people fell in love with, the idea that they could see something no one else could. But the feeling of superiority that Endo Stooke and his ilk treasured was the real illusion. It only took a slightly deeper look to see that the reality was quite the opposite. No one was particularly special, or maybe everyone was. They all came from the same place, were connected by the same energy, and there was something beautiful in that. But the Astra didn’t care. It couldn’t, any more than a fire cared about the sparks it threw. That was all people were, really. Just sparks cast by the same vast wildfire, and it was going to keep burning whether any given one of them kindled or died. The Astra wasn’t looking out for anyone.
Which meant they had to look after each other.
That was why she’d joined the constabulary, and it was what had led her to Belgrier. She meant to stop Endo before he hurt anyone else, and no masking was going to get in her way. With every ounce of her will, she wrestled Urnt’s signature down, grasped what she could before it drifted apart.
And step by step, it led her closer.
As they moved southward, the sense that he was near intensified, but the direction began to shift. That wasn’t a surprise; the non-human district was shoved up against the cliffside of Stelihn’s southern fjord. There wasn’t much further south she could go. What was strange was that she wasn’t being drawn along the line of the cliff, but rather downwards, and at a steeper angle the further she went.
Until, at last, she could go no further. The road terminated at the fjord’s edge in a dead-end overlooking the long drop to the water below. A single home sat to one side, clearly abandoned. Its roof had partially collapsed, allowing snow to gather in a large heap inside.
Indree turned to the others. “He’s below us somewhere. There has to be a way down.” There has to be. I’m not stopping here.
Kadka moved ahead to peer over the cliff. “Is no path here,” she said. “Unless we fly.”
“A tunnel, then,” Indree said. “Or a cave. And we’re going to look until we find it.”
“I have little experience with such spells.” Berken looked back and forth along the cliff. “Can you say how far we should search?”
“It feels close, but that only tells me absolute location,” Indree admitted. “The path down could start hundreds of yards in either direction and I wouldn’t know. But I can’t imagine they’d have been able to dig very far without being found out, so I’m guessing it’s near here.”
“And they can’t have used any magic that would call attention to themselves,” Tane offered. “So we should be able to use whatever route they took.”
Indree turned toward the abandoned house. “There, maybe. It would give some cover, and I bet it doesn’t get many visitors.” She moved toward the open, broken doorframe and ducked through. She couldn’t tell if it brought her closer or further away; the masking prevented that level of precision. The others followed her in and spread out, searching for signs.
It was Kadka who found it first. “Is something here,” she called out.
Indree followed her voice and found her in a back room, where the ceiling was still mostly intact. “What is it?”
Kadka pointed. “Is locked,” she said. “Won’t open.”
A solid-looking metal hatch with a single heavy handle was set into the floor against the back wall, newer than anything else in the dusty old house. It looked as if it had once been some sort of cellar or basement access, but the door had been replaced.
The others arrived behind Indree, crowding into the small space.
“If Kadka’s not strong enough, none of us are,” Tane said. “But… it can’t be warded. That would definitely get caught in a sweep for magic.” H
e looked up at Indree, a clear suggestion in his eyes.
“Then I should have no trouble doing this,” she said. A few words in the lingua, and the power of the Astra was in her fingertips. Silver-blue energy poured out of her hands, forming a gleaming cord that slid under the handle of the hatch at her command.
With a flick of her wrist, Indree yanked upward.
Metal screeched in resistance, but it was no match for the strength of her magic. The hatch bowed, bent, and then tore free of its mooring. Indree set it against the wall, and released the spell.
In the open hole where the hatch had been, a stairway disappeared into the dark. She didn’t know what was down there, but Endo tended to have surprises up his sleeve. Going in blind and without backup wasn’t her first choice. But we can’t wait, and we can’t bring in the Guard. This is it. No point wishing for something better.
Indree strode ahead of the others. “Come on, then,” she said. “It’s time to pay Endo a visit.”
Steeling herself for whatever lay below, she descended onto the stairs.
Chapter Nineteen
_____
THE STAIRS WENT down a very long way. Too long for Tane’s liking. The hatch had led first into what must have been a cellar once, but it had been turned into the mouth of a passage hewn into the cliff that led even deeper. He was certain now that they’d passed below the range of any magic-detecting artifacts the Belgrian Guard might have used in their sweeps. And they were still descending.
The Spirit Siphon (Magebreakers Book 4) Page 16