The sun was blazing down from the clear, afternoon sky as I stumbled out, and I squinted against the sudden brightness. The heat in the open square was intense and heavy, but at least it felt clean. I wanted to throw up my hands and shout, “Freedom!” Only I was worried the Ash Guard might take it personally and arrest me again.
I couldn’t just bust Benny out of gaol. I would end up straight back in the Guard fortress. I needed to think this through. Getting out of the heat would be a good start. I headed for the nearest street.
A group of old men looked up from under an awning where they were playing a noisy game of High Ground as I ducked into the shade beside them. I gave them a friendly wave, and they went back to their game, shaking their heads. Yep. Everyone thinks you’re a loon. Hey, any mage dragged into the Ash Guard fortress would be the same.
Counters clicked as one of the old men moved his piece around the board, demolishing several citadels on his way, to the outraged cries and curses of the other men.
High Ground was called the Game of Conquerors, and apparently Agate Blackspear, the self-proclaimed founder of Agatos, the Godkiller himself, had been a big fan. I had never really taken to it, because it required at least four players and I couldn’t think of three other people I could stand to be around for the seven or eight hours it took to play. That was a joke, but in all honesty, every game I had played had descended into bitter arguments by halfway through.
Whoever had set me and Benny up was playing their own game of High Ground. Prepare the field, line up your moves, strike. But it didn’t always play out the way you expected. With a shout of disbelief, the old man lost his emperor to an unexpected counter strike.
That’s right, you bastard, I thought at my unknown antagonist. The power of fucking analogy.
The smell of cinnamon drifted from a coffee house on the other side of the street, and the only reason my stomach didn’t rumble was because the cinnamon was cut by the fragrant stink of the small herd of goats making its way up the street, followed by their shepherd. I assumed they were on their way to the slaughter houses by the docks, but it never paid to ask too closely.
With a nod that no one noticed, I left the old men to their game before something could happen that would ruin my analogy.
Despite my protestations and my apparently well-known lack of magical power, the Ash Guard still thought I was involved. I was used to being an idiot, but this was the first time I’d been someone’s useful idiot. I didn’t like it.
Then there was Benny. I had always known that his stealing would catch up with him one day, but I hadn’t known it would happen when we were on a job together, and somehow that made it more personal. I didn’t have many friends — like I said, I pissed people off — and none had hung around as long as Benny. I wasn’t going to let the Watch chop off his hands. In a way, I had got lucky. The Ash Guard had no interest in common or garden thievery. If they cleared me of murder, I’d be a free man. Benny wasn’t so fortunate.
The Senate could pardon him, of course. Maybe if I’d been more respectable, if I’d followed the normal path for a mage and risen through society, I might have had contacts who could have a quiet word. My little sister, Mica, had taken that route. She had stayed with the Countess when I’d left and was now one of the Countess’s senior mages. But I had sworn long ago that I was never getting drawn into the Countess’s schemes again. The price was just too high.
The only other people with the leverage to spring Benny were the other high mages, the Wren and Carnelian Silkstar. The idea of being indebted to the Wren filled me with immense unease, and Silkstar wasn’t my or Benny’s biggest fan at the moment, seeing as he (rightly) thought we’d tried to rob him and (wrongly) thought we had murdered his servant.
But if I could track down the actual murderer and turn them over to Silkstar, maybe that would be enough to get him to overlook the burglary. High mages to a man and woman were proud and unforgiving, but this was all I had.
Yeah? I thought. Or are you just coming up with excuses to concentrate on clearing yourself of murder rather than helping Benny?
I swore, startling a priestess of Narth the Sleeping who was walking a couple of steps ahead of me. I was pretty certain Narth was dead, not sleeping, so I wasn’t particularly worried about the dirty look she shot me.
The obvious place to start would be the person who had hired Benny. Benny wasn’t getting released any time soon, but he should be able to tell me who his contact had been.
I had one other thing to take care of first, though. Benny might be a lowlife thief, but he was a good father, and he would be worrying himself stupid about his daughter. He would expect me to check that she was all right before anything else.
Benny owned a small house on the edge of the Warrens. Unlike the better parts of Agatos, and even unlike much of the Grey City, the Warrens hadn’t been planned. It had grown like fungus behind the western docks, narrow, dark streets and damp, crowded houses. Benny’s place was part of a cluster of houses no more than twenty yards from the true Warrens, and if I had to be honest, it was a whole lot nicer than my rundown apartment in the Grey City. There were no grand plazas here, but this borderland between the impoverished and respectable parts of Agatos didn’t slump under the weary poverty of the Warrens.
Benny’s house was a two-storey, whitewashed stone building, part of a block that enclosed a shared courtyard. Neat shutters were closed against the heat. Pots of carefully tended flowers stood on either side of the door. If you hadn’t known Benny the way I did, you would never have marked this as his home. The solid cedar door itself was locked, but a quick spell sprang it, and I eased the door open. I knew Benny didn’t have any magical wards against intrusion, because I’d offered to set some and he’d turned me down flat. Apparently, he couldn’t believe anyone would actually rob him, which, bearing in mind he spent half his nights rifling through the possessions of the wealthy, seemed touchingly naïve.
The house was dark inside, with only the open door throwing a sharp wedge of light onto the wooden floor. I drew in magic to enhance my senses.
It didn’t do any good. I had scarcely taken three steps into the house when a long, sharp blade touched my throat, and a voice whispered directly into my ear, “Hello, Uncle Nik.”
I managed to catch myself as a I stumbled, which was a good thing, otherwise I would have impaled myself on the knife.
“Bannaur’s balls,” I cursed. “Do you have to do that, Sereh?”
“You didn’t knock.”
“Would it have made any difference?”
“No.”
The knife slid away from my throat, stroking over my skin as gently as a feather. I shivered, then turned slowly to look down at Benny’s daughter. She stared back up at me with wide, innocent blue eyes. The knife, I noticed, had disappeared.
Sereh was eleven years old, and small for her age. I had known her since she’d been a baby. Depths, I had even helped raise her when Benny had needed help. But she still absolutely terrified me sometimes. It was partly those innocent blue eyes and the fact that she never spoke louder than a whisper, but it was mainly that knife of hers. She was also the only person I never heard coming. I thought she liked me, in her own way, but she was ferociously, dangerously loyal to Benny. Sereh would take on an incarnate god if she thought it was a threat to her father, and I’d put even money on her being the one who walked away. Being around Sereh always felt like tiptoeing through broken glass. If broken glass could leap up off the floor and stab you through the eye before you could blink.
I had no idea why Benny worried so much about her.
“Look, do you think we could get some light?” I said. Standing here in the dark with Sereh made me unaccountably nervous.
“If you need it, Uncle Nik.”
She led me through the house on silent feet and threw open the door into the courtyard. She settled on the edge of the steps, feet kicking freely. I carefully moved past her.
The courtyard was paved a
round the edge, with a lemon tree and a pair of peach trees shading a stone bench and a shallow pool. Laundry had been hung out to dry on lines that crisscrossed the courtyard. Sereh had spent a week rearranging the lines a couple of years ago, and it had taken me a few months to realise that anyone coming over the roofs would have a hard time entering the courtyard without disturbing the lines. Sereh didn’t share Benny’s touching innocence about the safety of this place. I could imagine her crouching in the dark like a spider touching its web, ready to leap into action at the slightest disturbance of the lines.
Beds of lavender, basil, coriander, and thyme scented the air. At the far end of the courtyard, two little children were playing with hoops.
“Dad’s not here, Uncle Nik,” Sereh said.
“I know. That’s the thing. Your dad and I were doing, um, a job.”
“You were stealing.”
I winced. Sometimes Benny was too honest with his kid. “Yes. Your dad was hired to steal something from Carnelian Silkstar, but it went wrong. Your dad’s been arrested.”
The knife was in Sereh’s hand again. I hadn’t seen it appear.
“Are we going to break him out?”
“What? No. Not unless we have to. We need to find a legitimate way of getting Benny free or Carnelian Silkstar will just track him down again. You can’t hide from a high mage.”
“Maybe we should kill Carnelian Silkstar.” Her voice was still soft and quiet.
Fuck me. My fingers tightened on the guardrail by the steps. “You can’t just kill a high mage.”
Sereh’s head cocked to one side, and she gazed up at me with those unsettling blue eyes. “Why not?”
I had never met Sereh’s mother. I had been too focused on trying to prove myself as a mage around the time Sereh was born, and I hadn’t seen Benny for a couple of years. Sereh’s mother had died in childbirth. Benny told me that her mother had been a Dhajawi merchant princess, and while a merchant princess seemed unlikely, she had certainly been from Dhaja, because Sereh had those characteristic blue eyes, and her skin was much darker than Benny’s and even a shade darker than mine. Whoever her mother had been, if she had been anything like Sereh, she must have been terrifying.
“It’s just … It’s not a good idea.”
Sereh’s expression didn’t change, but I could tell I wasn’t convincing her.
“Look, your dad wouldn’t want you to.”
Apparently those were the magic words, because the knife was gone again. Now was as good a time as any to chance my luck.
“I think you should come and stay with me until your dad gets out. It’ll be safer.”
Maybe not safer for me, or anyone within a block radius, either.
She gave me a quizzical look. “Why? I know all the ways in and out of here, and I know where all my knives are hidden.”
Of course you do.
“I think your dad would prefer it.”
It seemed the magic words only worked once, because she shook her head.
“I think he would prefer it if I stayed here. You only have magic to protect you.” Her knife flicked out and was gone again before I could blink.
“How about, you know, food and stuff?”
She gave me a pitying look. “Uncle Nik. I’ve been to your apartment, remember? You tried to cook for me. I think I’ll manage.”
Rude. But, fine. I knew when I was beaten. At least I could tell Benny I had tried. And despite Sereh’s confidence, I would be sure to check up on her regularly. Benny would do the same for me.
“I saw your sister yesterday,” Sereh volunteered.
That took me by surprise.
“Mica? Down here in the Warrens?”
Mica was actually my half sister, and she was six years younger than me. We didn’t see much of each other. Despite the fact that we had both grown up in the Warrens, I doubted she had been over this way for years. As one of the Countess’s favoured acolytes, she had moved smoothly up through society, while I had bumped along the bottom like a pot tied to the back of a cart. Mica had always been a better mage than me, anyway.
“Of course not, silly!” Sereh said. “She was up in Highstar Plaza. She’s done well for herself. I saw her house. It’s much nicer than yours.”
Of course it was, and I didn’t even own my apartment.
“What were you doing up at Highstar Plaza?”
“Violin lessons. There’s an old lady on the other side of the plaza who teaches.”
I blinked. “You do violin lessons?”
Her head tilted. “Would you like to hear me play?”
I had completely lost control of this conversation. I cleared my throat awkwardly. “Maybe not right now.”
Sereh’s blue eyes gazed guilelessly at me. “Is Mica my auntie?”
I think my eyes must have boggled. “What? No!” She tried hard enough to pretend she wasn’t my sister. She wasn’t about to start adopting my friends.
Sereh suddenly burst out laughing. “You get so flustered, Uncle Nik. It’s sweet.”
I coughed. “Um. Are you sure you don’t want to stay with me until your dad gets back?”
The laughter was gone as suddenly as it had appeared. “Why? Are you scared, Uncle Nik?”
Bloody terrified right now, I thought.
“No.” I edged past her into the house. “I need to get to work if I’m going to get your dad out.” I paused, looking down at her. “Promise me you won’t do anything stupid, all right?”
She didn’t reply. She just sat there on the step, twirling her knife in her fingers.
Shit. And now I had to worry about her trying to kill Carnelian Silkstar, too.
Well done, Nik, I told myself. You’ve just managed to make everything worse. Again.
Chapter Five
I took a brief diversion to my apartment in Feldspar Plaza to get myself ready for my visit, then headed straight for the City Watch. Their headquarters sat at the bottom of the Leap, directly beneath the Senate building. The position had always seemed appropriate to me because, if they wanted, the senators could stand on the Senate walls and piss directly down onto the guardians of Agatos’s law.
I didn’t often pull out my black cloak. The black cloak was the unofficial uniform of Agatos’s mages. It was made of thick wool, with a hood that shadowed your face and made you look mystical and sinister. It was supposed to send out the ‘I’m a mage, I don’t care if it’s sweltering, I’m too magical to sweat’ message. Which was a load of bollocks, because we all sweated like a Brythanii beating his priest to death. It also, in my humble opinion, made me look like a twat. But sometimes it was a useful tool to have. Like when you wanted to persuade the City Watch to let you in with their newest prisoner.
Being a mage didn’t actually give me any authority in Agatos, but when there was a chance that someone could pull your spleen out through your mouth, you tended to say yes if you could.
The Watch headquarters was a solid, three-storey block of a building made of fieldstone, whitewashed, of course, but with a slightly yellow tinge that suggested that some of the senators had been getting boisterous again. Barred windows and a heavy, guarded door didn’t make it any more welcoming.
I pulled up my hood as I stepped out of the sunlight, into the Watch headquarters, and tried to think non-sweaty thoughts. I had brought my mage’s rod with me, too. It was about four feet long, made of solid walnut wood, and had a solid lump of obsidian on the end. It had absolutely no function in casting a spell, but it was useful to hit someone over the head with when my magic failed. I strode purposefully towards the watchman at the desk, rod pointing directly at him, and intoned as portentously as possible, “I am here to see Benyon Field.”
The watchman, an older man with a balding head and a fringe of white hair, started up, then relaxed as he saw me.
“Another?” he said.
This wasn’t the reaction I had been expecting.
“Your colleague is already there,” he added.
No self
-respecting mage would ever admit to not knowing what was going on, so I nodded imperiously and stalked past in what I hoped was the right direction.
The answer came the moment I reached the cells. Sitting at a nearby table and helping himself to a plate heaped with spiced bread, olives, goat’s cheese, and hummus was another mage.
I stuttered to a halt just as the man looked up. Depths! I recognised this man from the courtyard of Thousand Walls. He had been one of the mages with Silkstar during his religious performance.
I should have known this would happen. Silkstar must have worried I would try to break Benny out, and he had prepared against it. I doubted I would be able to take this mage in a one-on-one battle, even if we weren’t in a building full of watchmen. For a brief, guilty moment I wished I had brought along Sereh. Then I realised that my authority was draining away with every second I stood there gawping, so I turned to one of the watchmen.
“Open Benyon Field’s cell. I wish to speak to him.”
The other mage made no move to stop me.
I would say this for the law in Agatos: they might enjoy bloody and disproportionate punishments, but until you were found guilty, they treated you well. Benny’s cell was clean and well lit by morgue-lamps just beyond the bars. There was a bed — a proper one — at the back, as well as a table, a couple of chairs, and a selection of worthy books on the shelf.
“There you are!” Benny said, surging to his feet. “What kept you?”
“I was arrested, too, you know. Not many mages escape the clutches of the Ash Guard.”
“They let you go, didn’t they?”
I shrugged.
Benny’s face suddenly creased with worry. “Did you—”
“Sereh’s fine.” I decided not to mention that she was considering killing Carnelian Silkstar. I didn’t think that would help his nerves.
“She’s only a little girl.”
She was also a one-person army.
“She’s fine,” I said again. “I’ll keep an eye on her.”
His face tightened. “You’d better.”
Shadow of a Dead God: A Mennik Thorn Novel Page 6