“Uh,” I said. “Yeah. I really didn’t know the node led into your house. Dex didn’t say.”
“I’m inclined to believe it was his fault, to be honest,” she said. “What was chasing you?”
“Turns out the Houses have a few traitors within their ranks,” I said to her. “The House of Earth does, anyway. We were trying to get some illegal cantrips off their hands, but they outnumbered us. If we hadn’t gone through the node, their inferno cantrips would’ve burned us to cinders. We barely made it out. Sorry I wrecked your game.”
“Apology accepted,” said Devon, reaching behind her and retrieving another cantrip, this one blank and gleaming with the Family’s symbol. “This cantrip, though, it’s a nasty piece of work.”
My heart skipped. “You figured out what it is?”
“Eventually,” she said. “The last spell used on it was like a mechanised magical virus which breaks down the body from the inside.”
“That’s how Zade died?” Damn. “Guess it’s less flashy than an inferno cantrip.”
“Just as lethal, though,” she said. “If the killer wanted to hide how they did it, they shouldn’t have used a reusable cantrip.”
“Maybe it’s all they had on them,” I said. “The cantrips the House of Earth was smuggling in were the same sort, I think. But I don’t think they were carved in Arcadia.”
Curiosity flickered in her eyes. “Then where?”
“I have no idea,” I admitted, “but this isn’t a spell you’d find on the market. And that mark on the back… it belongs to the Family. It’s their signature.”
She lowered the cantrip in her hand. “Gonna tell me who the Family is?”
“Only if you promise not to say a word to the Order,” I said. “I heard you work for them.”
“I did,” she said. “I mean, technically I still do. They thought I was dead for a while… it’s complicated, but they’re one of the few organisations who buy cantrips on Earth. I don’t like them, but I need to pay my bills. If they knew I was here in the castle, though, they’d slap me with a black mark for all the times I’ve used the nodes without their permission. I’m not on their side, and I’m sure as hell not reporting to them.”
“Does Liv know?” I asked.
“She knows,” she said. “She isn’t happy about me risking my neck by staying in their employment, but I figured we could use an inside source on the Order. If you haven’t heard, a group of renegade spirit mages took over the upper management from within, and most of the other Order members don’t have a clue.”
“How’d you find out, then?” I said.
“Because the people who nearly killed me with that inferno cantrip were working with someone inside the Order,” she said. “They caused a diversion and then staged a coup.”
“Damn.” The Order was known for punishing mages harshly, but that didn’t mean I could ever have pictured them being taken over by spirit mages from the inside. “Are they still working with the Houses of the Elements, even now?”
“The Order is no longer handing prisoners over to the Houses,” she said. “Obvious reasons. I don’t know if their ambassadors have met in person since the incident, but if it’s true what you say and at least one of the Houses is working with the enemy as well, I can imagine they’re more closely involved.”
“Great,” I said. “Problem is, the House of Fire won’t listen to a word I say whenever I try to warn them. What’re the odds that they’ve already been taken over as well?”
Was that why they hadn’t executed Tay yet? For all I knew, they’d been the ones to set the Family free in the first place. On the other hand, that inferno cantrip the House of Earth had thrown at me had damn near struck the House of Fire’s base as well. Not exactly what I’d expect from their ally.
“No idea, but I’m done with this cantrip,” said Devon. “Let me know if you need me to look at anything else.”
“I don’t yet,” I said, “but… how tricky is that virus cantrip to make?”
“Very,” she said. “It’s also highly illegal on both sides of the nodes because it’s so damn contagious. If this cantrip was active in any way, I’d have dropped dead the instant I touched it.”
“Damn.” I looked at the deceptively innocuous golden coin. “Lucky it was inactive when I picked it up, then.”
“I can think of a dozen possible uses for a spell of that nature, none of them pleasant,” she said.
Yeah. “They wouldn’t be much use against the Death King.”
Then again, according to Miles, the enemy already had a potential way of killing a lich… or rather, bringing them back to life.
“Don’t speak too soon,” said Devon. “You want this back?”
“Nah, keep it,” I said. “I’m no practitioner. Thanks for the help.”
After walking out of the dorm, I left the castle via the back door. I hadn’t visited my brother since his temper tantrum the other day, and while he was a manipulative bastard, his power was limited while he was in jail. Since the Death King seemed to have no intention of interrogating him and he’d given me enough clues to guess that he’d manipulated Tay into killing the jailor, maybe I could coax some more information out of him on how much he knew about the virus-laced cantrips—and where they were being manufactured.
I approached the two liches guarding the jail. “May I see Adair?”
“No,” responded the lich on the left-hand side, in the same cold echoing voice all the liches possessed.
Worth a try.
“I think I’m the only person he’ll speak to,” I went on. “He definitely has information the Death King will want to know, but he’s too stubborn to talk to anyone else. I won’t look him in the eyes or give him the chance to use his powers on me.”
“If you insist on going inside,” said the lich on the right, “we’ll be watching you.”
“Fine, but that might cause him to clam up.” I’d lose nothing for trying, though, so I entered the prison via the door and let the two liches trail in behind me.
“You again,” Adair said. “I knew you’d come crawling back.”
“Who let you out of your cell?” I said. “The first time around?”
He laughed. “The Death King.”
“That’s not funny.”
“I thought it was pretty fucking funny.” He sat back on the bench inside his cell. “Lighten up, sister.”
“Not your sister.” By designating us as siblings, our guardians had hoped we’d mirror each other’s behaviour, but he’d always been crueller, sharper than I was, and had stamped out what little conscience he’d possessed when we were kids in an effort to emulate Lex and Roth.
“You are,” he said. “You’re just like me, deep down. You locked me up here because you couldn’t face the truth.”
I shook my head at him. “How many people in the House of Fire are allied with the lich named Hawker and the spirit mages who took over the Order of the Elements?”
He was silent for an instant. “Huh?”
I risked a glance at him and saw puzzlement on his face. I’d wanted to catch him off guard, and it’d worked. Unfortunately, I hadn’t exactly planned where to go from there.
“You heard me,” I said. “How many members of the House of Fire have joined his side? Is it an open secret like in the House of Earth?”
“Makes no difference whether you know or not,” he said. “It’s already too late.”
His words wormed beneath my skin. So the enemy is already there. “I beg to differ. I’m assuming not everyone in the Houses is working for the enemy, or else they wouldn’t have seen to it that you stayed behind bars.”
His face flushed. “Watch it.”
“It’s true, isn’t it?” I said. “Even our guardians just left you locked up in there. Anyone would think they didn’t care.”
I averted my gaze, but I felt his sharp eyes on me all the same. “You need to watch your mouth.”
“Tough talk from a guy behind bars,” I
said. “Why’d you kill the jailor using a cantrip laced with a virus, anyway? Fancied a change, or didn’t you feel like being as violent as usual?”
“You don’t have a clue what’s coming, do you,” he said. “It’ll make those inferno cantrips look like a blessing.”
Too late, I recalled Devon’s words about those cantrips being deadly to anyone who laid their hands on them. Less violent than Adair’s usual methods, yes, but if the box of cantrips those mages had been carrying had contained countless copies of the same cantrip, they might be lethal to large numbers of people. Yet all my warnings to the House of Fire had fallen on deaf ears. This one would be no exception.
I did my best to keep my face blank as I addressed the cage bars. “I know what’s not coming. Lex and Roth. They don’t give a crap about you.”
At the sound of the names of our guardians, he roared in anger and rose to his face, and I turned away to avoid making accidental eye contact with him.
“Hawker will be here soon enough,” Adair called after me as I left the jail. “He’ll be the one who takes power from the Death King. Mark my words.”
A likely story. It was past time I found the Death King, wherever he was. He definitely wasn’t playing video games with the Elemental Soldiers, but his own quarters were the only part of the castle which were out of bounds to the rest of us. Regardless, Adair’s warning had awakened a sense of urgency I couldn’t shake. I entered the castle via the front doors and made my way to the far corridor, where a wooden door led to the private staircase belonging to the King of the Dead.
Before I could knock on the door, the Death King floated through the wooden surface. I stumbled back, damn near tripping over my feet. His cold stare sent a wave of chills down to my bones, and I swore the very fire inside me extinguished itself.
“Ack!” My voice sounded entirely too squeaky for my liking.
The Death King studied me. “If you’ve come to redecorate my quarters as well as the entrance hall, then I’d advise you to banish the notion.”
Oh shit. He’d noticed the improvement I’d made to the skulls in the pillars. “I thought you were out of the castle.”
Why had I thought redecorating his creepy pillars was a good idea again? I’d ticked off Striker to no end when I’d worked for him, but this was the first time I’d had a boss who could genuinely rip out my soul if he felt like it. For all I knew, that would be a permanent end even for the likes of me.
“You have an update for me, don’t you?” He drifted past me into the entrance hall, and I followed, relief sweeping through me at the notion that he wasn’t going to kill me after all.
I gave him a quick rundown of the events of last Friday evening, including my recent discovery about the House of Earth’s loyalties. He didn’t react with any surprise whatsoever to my pronouncement that several of their number seemed to be obtaining illegal cantrips from the enemy.
“So you knew,” I said. “You knew the Houses were being taken over from within.”
“I suspected there was a strong possibility.”
My hands clenched. “Then what am I supposed to do? I take it you want me to stop trying to pursue an alliance with them?”
“I didn’t have the impression you were having much luck in that regard anyway,” he said.
“Then why bother taking the House of Fire’s prisoner?” I said. “Why’d they let you bring Adair here if they didn’t want any kind of alliance with you?”
“Presumably, they wanted him off their hands,” he said. “I imagine it was a relief to be rid of him, one way or another.”
“You’re telling me,” I said. “For the record, I also figured out the jailor at the House of Fire was killed by a cantrip containing a magical virus. Devon worked it out.”
“Good for her,” he said. “I’m glad you found a way to entertain yourself which didn’t involve breaking the law or redecorating my property.”
Unbelievable. “Don’t blame me when the Family shows up on the doorstep to retrieve their missing member. Aren’t you the least bit concerned about the Houses?”
“Yes,” he said. “I am. That said, I suspected they’d be reticent to join forces with me. We don’t have a pleasant history with one another.”
“I’m not their biggest fan either, but the idea of someone like my brother, the Family, having access to their resources…” I broke off. “Cantrips that can kill at a touch and Elysium’s only supplier being on the enemy’s side ought to warrant a little more attention, surely. I can’t even convince the House of Fire’s guards there’s a problem.”
“Then they’ll have to learn the hard way,” he said. “Like the House of Earth did, I imagine.”
“You used to belong to the House of Spirit,” I said. “The Court of the Dead is all that’s left of the fifth House. Miles told me.”
“Your point?”
I threw up my hands. “I know you don’t like the other Houses, but can’t you… I don’t know, send someone else to give them a warning? I’m not the person to do it. We have too unpleasant a history.”
“As a matter of fact, I always thought you were uniquely suited to the job for a reason.” He studied me. “Maybe you just aren’t asking the right questions.”
What was that supposed to mean? He was being spectacularly unhelpful, considering he must know perfectly well there was a strong chance the Houses had already fallen under the control of the Family.
Unless… wait a moment.
My mouth parted. “You mean you want me to pretend I’m working with this… Hawker person myself, right? Or with whoever’s calling the shots? You don’t think that wouldn’t end badly for me?”
“That’s your risk to take,” he said. “If you ask the right questions, then you’ll be able to narrow down the list of traitors pretty easily.”
“Assuming they don’t just lock me up.” Which was a strong possibility, given that I didn’t know for sure how many of the House of Fire’s members were working with the enemy.
“I’m sure you can find a way to avoid it. You walked out of there at least once before.”
Yes, I did. Three times, in fact. This, though, was different. Higher stakes. Potentially deadly.
Not that I was one to back down from a challenge.
10
Dex waited for me at the other end of the hall when I left the Death King, hovering beside one of the newly decorated pillars.
“Off on another mission?” he said.
“You might say that,” I said. “I’m going back to the House of Fire. Want to come?”
“Wouldn’t miss it,” he responded. “Those earth mages won’t still be looking for trouble, will they?”
“They ought to have given up by now.” I was more concerned with the House of Fire, and the impossibility of weeding out the traitors without getting locked up myself. Especially if Harris turned out to be one of them.
Once again, the pair of us travelled through the node to Elysium. The citadel towered over the rooftops, the sky was overcast, and the street was mercifully earth mage-free. The House of Fire’s door had presumably been replaced after the inferno cantrip had blasted the old one to pieces, but the only change to its design was that a heavy lock now bolted it shut from the outside. That did not look welcoming in the slightest, but I rapped on the wooden surface with my knuckles anyway. Nobody answered.
“What’s going on in there?” I tried peering into the building, but the windows were tinted so it was impossible for me to see if anyone was inside. “Dex, can you see anyone in there?”
“Two guards are downstairs. Want me to flush them out?”
“No,” I said. “Hang on.”
I walked around the side of the building to the back door and peered through the small pane of glass at the top. If I broke in, I could say goodbye to gaining the House’s cooperation. On the other hand, nothing said ‘go away’ like a massive lock on the door. Who was I kidding? The earth mages had blown up their door with an inferno cantrip, and the
re was absolutely no way in hell Harris would believe I hadn’t been involved. Even if by some miracle I made my way past him, I didn’t have the patience to talk to every member of the House until I found whoever had joined up with the Family, not when most of them were plainly not in the know and were more likely to think I was the one trying to recruit them. I might as well have put myself in a cell already and saved them the bother.
Screw that. Instead, I reached in my pocket for an unlocking spell and an invisibility cantrip. “Forget the espionage shit. They clearly aren’t open for business, so I’ll go in the back way.”
Dex hovered above the door, excitement fizzling around him in the form of fiery sparks. “Want me to slip inside and make sure nobody’s watching?”
“Please.” I used the unlocking spell and pushed the door open a fraction, and he darted ahead of me. Turning on the invisibility cantrip, I followed him.
Unnatural silence filled the space within. While the stairs leading down to the cells lay at the opposite end of the corridor, past the guards near the front door, I found myself wondering why it was so damn quiet in here. Had the House decided to close up entirely? Where in hell was everyone?
I debated looking for the cantrip that’d killed the guard, but I’d bet it was long gone by now. I climbed the stairs leading to the upper corridor and halted beside the closed door to the jailor’s office. Zade might be dead, but I doubted anyone had cleaned out the place afterwards. Which meant there might well be evidence sitting in there pointing to the culprit. Even if not, the files on every prisoner, past and present, were inside that office. Including me… and including the Family.
If Harris wouldn’t tell me how they’d escaped, then I’d find out for myself.
One unlocking spell later and I entered the former jailor’s office, closing the door behind me. The neat, sparsely decorated room brought a shudder of revulsion as I recalled being hauled in there for my first interrogation. Zade’s sneering face flickered in my mind’s eye, his taunts echoing in my mind. I felt no sadness at his death. Rather, relief… and suspicion. The office was a little too pristine, as though someone had gone through and cleaned it up after his death after all. Damn. Should have known it wouldn’t be that easily.
House of Fire (Parallel Magic Book 2) Page 10