by Dave Gross
“Why only for a while?”
“She was known for a sharp wit and sharper tongue. None of her suitors was clever enough to keep up.”
Few things appealed to me more than a quick-witted woman, although I could do without the sharp tongue. Illyria had not seemed especially shrewish, but that could be because she wanted something from me.
“Later, it was the necromancy that put them off,” Vencarlo said. “One of Dengaro’s best students was smitten with the girl, and he was quick enough to keep up. Once he learned she’d joined the Hall of Whispers, though…” Vencarlo blew imaginary feathers from his fingers. “Poof!”
“Young hearts are fickle.”
He raised his goblet. “To faithful hearts!”
“Now you are making any excuse for a toast.”
“To excuses! To toasts!”
We drank.
Vencarlo’s gaze fell upon the Shadowless Sword. I had seen him peek at it several times over the past hours, perhaps waiting for me to show it to him. He could wait no longer. “May I?”
I nodded.
He unsheathed the blade, murmuring at its fine craftsmanship. “I can’t say I approve of the style,” he said. “You should have kept to the rapier. If nothing else, think of the stunts with which we entertained the ladies.”
“Do you still do the candle trick?”
“What do you think?”
“Show me.”
He handed me the Shadowless Sword and drew his rapier. Within the span of a second, he lashed several strokes at the nearer candelabra. Each of the flames vanished, their wicks cut from the candles.
“Not bad.”
“I’d like to see you do the same with that cleaver.”
I lifted the Shadowless Sword.
“It won’t work with such a wide blade. The weight alone—”
With a sharp ki shout, I lashed out and sheathed the sword in what appeared even to my eyes a single swift motion.
Vencarlo clucked his tongue. “You see? That was very theatrical, and doubtless authentic to the Eastern style, but—”
I stamped the floor and four candles wobbled and fell, each cut in two places with an elegant curve.
He stared at the candles. He stared at me. He stared at the sword.
“May I try it?”
I passed him the blade. He assumed a classical stance, reconsidered, and stood tall. With a snap of his wrist, he lashed the candles twice. Four tumbled, each cut twice.
“This is quite a sword.” He put his eye to the guard and peered down its blade, first at one of the remaining candles, then out into the moonlit street, and finally at me.
Whatever he saw in my face gave him a start.
“What is it?” I asked.
He hesitated. “A trick of the light.”
“The Shadowless Sword reveals illusions. Did you detect one on me?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “It just appeared that a shadow crossed your face.”
Outside, a cloud drifted off the face of the moon.
“Ah,” I said. “Perhaps it was just a trick of the light.”
“What else does this sword do?”
“The crown princess of Quain gave it to me as a token of gratitude for service to the throne, and you ask what more it does?” His question annoyed me both because he belittled the significance of my prize and for the reminder that I had never conducted a thorough exploration of the weapon’s powers.
“It’s a fine weapon,” he said, sounding as contrite as I had ever heard him. Perhaps I had been too defensive. He returned the sword over his forearm. “Fine, that is, for a foreign machete.”
“Would you care to test your rapier on this foreign machete?”
“Now you’re talking like a man,” said Vencarlo. An instant later, his blade was in his hand. We kicked away the chairs. He assumed an old-fashioned Chelish guard stance. I did the same, but in the Tian style.
“Do not forget who won our first duel,” I said.
“Better that you recall who won our last.”
He made a good point, but I had learned much in my recent travels. Besides, there was no blade swifter than the Shadowless Sword.
He beat my weapon and feinted an advance, but I refused to be gulled. With a smile, he attacked again, beating twice and cutting under the Shadowless Sword. I surprised him by doubling under and beating his slender blade out of line. He retreated half a step and lunged.
I parried and followed through with a riposte. Rather than retreat or defend, he turned the point of his rapier into the blood groove of my sword. The sharp point slid down my blade, hopped over the shallow crosspiece, and stabbed my hand between finger and thumb. I hissed at the pain.
Arnisant advanced with a warning woof.
I gave him the sign to sit. He obeyed, but his gaze locked on Vencarlo.
Vencarlo stepped back and performed a smart salute. Apart from a sheen on his eyes, he betrayed little evidence that the wine had impaired his skill. “You want a basket on that hilt.”
He made his point, but he need not have made it with such force. Sheathing my sword, I pinched the wound. It was deep and bled profusely. As I reached for a napkin on the table, several fat drops of blood spilled on the blank pages of the codex.
“Your book!” said Vencarlo. He reached for another napkin with which to sop the blood.
“No, wait.”
The blood beaded and rolled across the parchment surface. For an instant I thought the pages were impervious to moisture. Then a fine network of red lines appeared in the wake of the dribbling blood.
“What is that?” said Vencarlo.
I wiped the beaded blood across the page. Where it wet the parchment, it revealed more hidden script. I recognized two different languages, one arcane, the other as ancient as the runelords themselves. “Thassilonian.”
As the blood trickled across the parchment, I thought of the stain on Ygresta’s desk blotter. He must have discovered the book’s secret before his death.
I removed the napkin and pinched the flesh beside my wound to produce more blood. Smearing it across the page, I revealed more and more text.
I squeezed my hand again. Vencarlo touched my arm. “You’ll bleed yourself dry before you cover another page.”
“You are right, of course.” My mind reeled with possibilities. Thassilonian history enthralled me, as it did most members of the Pathfinder Society, but I had never devoted the time to mastering the subject.
“It’s late,” said Vencarlo. “Tomorrow, you can buy a few chickens from the market.”
“Perhaps I can find a night market. I want to know what mysteries this book contains.”
“It’s late,” he said. “Let it wait until tomorrow.”
“But what will I do until then?”
He filled our goblets. “A toast!”
“To what?”
“Give me a moment,” he said. “I’ll think of something.”
4
The Laboratory
Radovan
Sunlight stabbed me in the eyes. I rolled away from it and fell out of bed onto a carpet of dirty clothes. Last night I’d been too distracted to notice, but Janneke’s place was a pigsty.
The bounty hunter stretched out over the sliver of bed she hadn’t already claimed. I liked the way the morning light picked out the tiny hairs on her skin. Light brown freckles dotted her back and arms. Her braids had come undone, spilling red gold across her muscled shoulders. She was stronger than she looked. I had the bruises to prove it.
Searching for my clothes, I found Janneke’s double crossbow under a rumpled quilt. I picked it up to feel the heft. It was heavier than I’d guessed, with an iron cap on the butt and steel reinforcements on the sides. Instead of a string, the mechanism on top had a metal cup on four springs. The bottom looked like a regular crossbow except with a fat cylinder feeding quarrels into the groove: gnome craftsmanship, real smooth. If I found out where she had it made, I’d ask the boss to buy me one.
>
I put down the bow and stepped in a spill of cold noodles. I’d known some slobs in my days, but Janneke was in the running for the worst one.
I picked up a few more things off the floor until I found my pants and one of my kickers. I pulled them on and stood on the boot foot to avoid another nasty surprise.
More clothes spilled out of a doorless wardrobe. A pitcher and basin sat on a little table by the window. Against the inner wall stood a bigger table with a couple chairs. Janneke’s mismatched armor settled on one. Her backpack sat on the other. Its openings were all on the top. Along with her two billy clubs, the ends of a dozen different crossbow cylinders stuck out. The butts were painted in different colors with different patterns molded onto the caps. I guessed that let her choose the right ammo by touch.
The table was the only tidy spot in the flat. A neat row of open cylinders lay beside the surprises Janneke packed inside them. I recognized the nets, coiled line, wooden balls, and brick spikes. She also had a box of caltrops, jars of powder, and different colors of glass vials. The jars and vials smelled pretty bad, and I knew I wouldn’t want to get hit with one of those cylinders. Whatever was in them, Janneke looked ready for anything.
I opened the windows for some fresh air. At the squeak, Janneke moaned and covered her head with a pillow. Seconds later, she went back to snoring.
Wanted posters covered the walls. Except for a few gnomes, hellspawn, or half-orcs, the faces were human. I pegged the artist as a Chelaxian because all the Varisians looked sly and all the Shoanti savage. The hellspawn looked ugly as sin. Most do. Desna smiled on me that way.
Most of the posters read KORVOSA, but others read MAGNIMAR, RIDDLEPORT, KAER MAGA, or JANDERHOFF. I memorized the faces on the last one. For all their talk of daughters’ honor, I wouldn’t put it past the dwarf lords to hire an assassin.
That thought made me want my knife. My other kicker turned up first, but then I found my jacket pushed up under the bed. Careful not to wake Janneke, I made sure the blade was still in the built-in sheath.
“Whazzatonnerbah?”
Janneke arched her back as she stretched, proving she was a couple inches longer than her bed. She swallowed and cleared her throat. “I said, what’s that on your back? A tattoo?”
“What? No, I don’t got any.”
“Oh. I just figured you Sczarni boys usually go for tattoos.”
“You think I’m Sczarni?”
“Well, you sound like a Chel, but you look Varisian. Aren’t you?”
“By blood, yeah.” I looked over my shoulder but couldn’t see whatever she saw. Maybe she bruised me worse than I figured.
“Turn around.” She sat up and turned me herself. Whatever she saw made her let out a big, beer-hall guffaw.
“What? What?” I tried to see but found myself turning around like Arni chasing his own tail. “You got a mirror under all this garbage?”
“No,” she said, still laughing. “But look.”
She pointed at a wanted poster beside the bed. Last night she’d caught me up in some northern wrestling move and pinned me there for a nice little while.
The ink was smudged from where it’d come off on my skin, but I could still make out the words:
8,000 ALIVE, 2,000 DEAD
ZORAN
Human Male Varisian
Wanted for Great Theft
May Possess DEADLY Arcane Artifacts
Known associates: Sczarni, Chimneysweeps, Cerulean Society
Report to Citadel Volshyenek
KORVOSA
The image was smeared, but the freckled nose and pointed chin looked familiar. “This guy related to the thief who robbed me?”
“What?” Janneke blinked and scowled at the bright eastern window. “No, it was him I was chasing. Zoran.”
“That was a woman.”
“Zoran is a master of disguise.” A few strands of hair fell across her face. She gathered them up and started weaving them back into braids. “The city guard thinks he disguises himself as a servant to get inside the houses he burgles.”
“I know the difference between a man and a woman.”
She shrugged. “If you see him again, tip me off. I’ll cut you in.”
“I don’t know how long we’ll be in town. Depends on how long it takes the boss to settle his business.” Digging around for my belt, I came up with her helmet. The black paint made for a pretty good cougar face, but I could see it used to be gray steel. “That guard captain didn’t like your hat. How come?”
“You’ve never heard of the Gray Maidens?”
I shrugged.
“We were a special unit answerable only to the queen. When that went bad, we split up. My commander formed a new outfit. We went north and hired ourselves out as guards, bounty hunters, whatever we could find. When that went bad, I came back here to freelance. What kind of work do you do?”
“I’m a…” I had to think about it. Over the years, my arrangement with the boss had changed. He’d called me his friend, but that goes only so far when one of you’s a lord of Cheliax and the other’s whatever the hell I am. Whenever the question came up, we always ended up where we started. “Bodyguard.”
Janneke nodded. “And your boss? What’s he?”
“He’s what you call incognito.”
“You mean he’s traveling incognito.”
“No, we’re traveling in a carriage. He’s incognito.”
It took her a second to decide whether I was just that adorable. She hit me with the pillow. “I don’t understand even stupid jokes before my first cup of coffee. Let’s get some. There’s a gnome with this wild steam machine down by the Traveling Man.”
“That sounds great, but I’d better…” I jerked my thumb over my shoulder. “Business and pleasure, you know. On the job. Professionalism.” Once I heard myself, I realized I was babbling.
“Yeah, sure.” She didn’t like it, but she heard what I was really saying. “I could use some more shuteye.”
“If I see your gal, I’ll let you know.”
“Guy. But sounds good.”
There was a little more of that before I got out the door. Not my cleanest getaway, but I’d had worse. Sometimes much worse.
I cut north to Jeggare Street, hoping to snag one of those street signs, but the place was already lousy with people. If I was going to steal one, it’d have to be late at night or not at all. I headed back toward the bridge and got a surprise.
The boss strolled down Fort Korvosa Boulevard with Arni at his side. By his delicate posture, I knew he’d had a night of many cups.
Sleepy-eyed, he didn’t notice me, but Arni did. The dog gave me the upward nod but didn’t give me away as I slipped up behind the boss. He wouldn’t let anybody else do that, but we were pals.
In a frail voice, I said, “Spare a few coins for a war vet, milord?”
The boss turned real slow, raising an eyebrow as if I was the one caught stinking of wine in Old Korvosa.
“Radovan.” He spoke all careful. “I have discovered the most extraordinary thing.”
“Me, too.” I pointed at a JEGGARE STREET sign.
He blinked. He turned to look at the sign. He turned back and blinked again. “Very amusing. What are you doing here?”
“I’m being discreet. What are you doing? It looks like you drained all the taps at Jeggy’s Jug.”
His eyes got big, his face turning red. “Never refer to that establishment by that odious name.” He winced at the volume of his own voice. “As for my nocturnal activity, I was visiting an old friend. We spent the night reminiscing.”
He had a bandage on his hand. “You got hurt?”
“That is precisely what I was trying to tell you. Quite by accident, I have discovered the secret of the mysterious book.”
Not another mysterious book, I thought. But I knew better than to say it. If the boss had a specialty—in a way he had hundreds, but if he had only one—it’d be books. Mysterious books, cursed books, books in foreign langu
ages, books on scrolls and tablets and wood carvings, evil books, forbidden books, even sometimes naughty books with pictures, which I liked to peruse while I was waiting for him to come back to his library. Anyway, the boss liked books, all kinds. “Maybe you better catch me up.”
The boss started talking, only he went in loops instead of his usual straight line. He started with something about a girl, then he told me about his old classmate’s library. He mentioned something about the girl’s sculpted hair, and he said his school chum had left him a blank book. He said he wanted to find out more about the girl, so that’s why he visited his old fencing master.
I narrowed in on the important point. “So you like this girl.”
“You will refer to her as Lady Illyria.”
“She’s a looker?”
“That is quite irrelevant.”
“So she’s a hag?”
“How dare you?”
“So she’s a looker?”
“I would eschew your crude lingo for a more fitting term like ‘beauteous’ or ‘exquisite,’ or perhaps— That is quite beside the point. What matters is that I do not trust her. I am not even sure I like her very much. She is impertinent.”
“I’m impertinent.”
“My point exactly.”
If we kept on that way, I was going to irritate him. It was better he woke up all the way before I tested his patience. “How about we eat a bun and drink some coffee?”
He covered his mouth to hold in a burp, or worse. “A splendid suggestion.”
The boss looked impressed at the gnome’s crazy steam gizmo. It seemed like a lot of trouble to make such a little cup of coffee, but it was damned fine coffee, and hot. I bought sweet rolls from a street vendor, palming one to feed Arni under the table while the boss admired the coffee machine. He sent me back for more while he ordered more coffee.
Four cups and six buns later, we strolled back across the bridge to the mainland. The boss looked better, but I still didn’t crack wise when we crossed Jeggare Circle. If I wasn’t careful, one day he was going to poke me with that sword. Instead, I got him to tell me his story again. This time it made more sense.
“While I finish my inventory of his books, I want you to examine Ygresta’s rooms.”