False Dawn: Ageless Mysteries - Book 2

by Vanessa Nelson

  “Did they seem to focus on anyone in particular?” Thea asked.

  “Uh. Now you ask, they did. There was an old man selling jewellery. Over there,” she used her pipe to point again. “Not seen him for a few days. He’s usually here for four days or so, then away for a week at a time.”

  “Do you know if he has a workshop somewhere?” Thea asked. If the Archon’s soldiers had questioned the man and found nothing, it was unlikely she would find anything, either. But she had to ask.

  “Him? No, not him. All talk. No skill.”

  “So, does he sell things for other people, then?” Thea asked, feeling as if she was missing some important piece of information.

  The woman wasn’t listening. Her eyes had gone past Thea, and Niath, to a point near the livestock pens at the other side of the market.

  Thea turned and saw a group of four familiar-looking men standing together, staring towards her and Niath.

  “Don’t remember,” the woman said, and took a step away from Thea. “Now, if you’re not buying, you best be moving on. Talk doesn’t fill bellies.”

  “No, it doesn’t,” Thea agreed, pulling a coin out from a pocket. “Thank you for your time,” she said, and laid the coin on the stall.

  The woman’s mouth pursed, as if she wanted to say something else, but she kept silent as Thea and Niath moved on.

  “Do you know those men?” Niath asked.

  “Not their names. They were at another market yesterday,” Thea said, keeping her pace steady as she moved along the line of stalls towards the livestock pens and the men.

  They had seen her approach. And they must have seen Niath, too. And they were not moving.

  “Good day to you, sirs,” Thea said cheerfully when she was close enough. She stopped and set her hands behind her back, copying Niath’s favourite pose. “What brings you here today?”

  “A bit of this. A bit of that.” It was the same man with the scruffy beard who had spoken to her before. “What’s your business here?”

  “Watch business,” she answered, eyes travelling along the group. They had the look of bullies, all of them. The ones who hadn’t spoken were standing with their feet slightly apart, shoulders square, thumbs tucked into their belts. Trying to make themselves look bigger than they were.

  “With a mage?” the younger man who had called her a girl before asked, lip curling in disgust.

  “Oh, I’m here on Citadel business,” Niath said, matching Thea’s cheerful tone. “Perhaps you’d like to help the Citadel?” he asked.

  Thea turned and stared at him, along with the four men. He seemed quite sincere, a small smile on his mouth, eyes bright.

  “Don’t want anything to do with the Citadel,” the young man said, voice surly.

  “Or that crazed winged bat,” one of the others said.

  The bottom dropped out of Thea’s stomach. It was a test. She knew it was a test. Even although the city and the Citadel were separate, all citizens were supposed to show proper respect for the Archon. It was not the first time that she had heard Edris described as a crazed winged bat, or in other even more colourful language. But those people had been several beers into a long night’s drinking at a tavern. She and the other Watchmen had given them strict warnings, nothing more.

  The men in front of her were sober, talking to her in daylight, with witnesses around them, and in front of a Citadel mage. A warning was not sufficient.

  As much as she wished to ignore the comment, she could not. Not while on duty. She opened her mouth to inform them of the laws they had broken, and the consequences, interrupted by the mage.

  “Oh, that’s funny,” Niath said, drawing another stare from the four men and Thea. His mouth was still curved up, but there was an edge to his smile that made Thea want to take a step away from him. “Have you ever seen a crazed bat?”

  “Eh? No. What?” the man said.

  “No fun at all, I assure you,” Niath said, shaking his head. “They have a bad habit of biting without warning. Then the wound gets infected and their victims die screaming in agony.”

  He was holding the man’s eyes as he spoke, and Thea saw a pulse start beating in the man’s forehead. He swallowed, colour fading from his skin. Niath’s voice had been perfectly pleasant, but it seemed the men were clever enough to understand the threat he posed. A Citadel Mage. There were stories of mages turning people into creatures. Doubtless the man was now wondering if Niath really could turn him into a bat.

  Being turned into a bat, or even worrying about being turned into a bat, was a far worse punishment than anything that Thea, or the Watch, could deal out.

  “Now, we don’t want any trouble,” the first speaker, with the beard, said. Clearly the leader of the group.

  “No?” Thea asked, voice sharper than she had intended. “Then perhaps you’ll tell me what you know about why the Archon’s soldiers were here?”

  “I don’t need to tell you anything,” the bearded man said, lip curling again.

  “I’m an officer of the Watch,” Thea said, tone still sharp. “You can answer me here, or-”

  “At the Citadel,” Niath said, breaking in before Thea could threaten to take the men to the nearest Watch Station. “They would be delighted to hear your views of the Archon,” he added, voice still in its pleasant tone.

  She was tempted to kick Niath in the shins, or at least step in front of him. As much as the men should not be allowed to get away with insulting the Archon, his unsubtle threats were not helping.

  “Citadel doesn’t have jurisdiction here,” the bearded man said.

  “You think that matters?” Thea asked, hearing the bitterness in her own voice. “The Archon’s soldiers have been here once already.”

  The man locked stares with her. She held his gaze. He was a bully, but he was also not stupid. At least, not completely. As another citizen of Accanter he would know as well as she did that the Archon and the Ageless would go where they wanted and do as they pleased in the city. Thea hoped that it would be a far more effective threat than Niath’s.

  She stayed quiet and still and to her surprise, Niath did the same.

  The silence stretched between them until the man jerked his chin to his companions. “Go keep a look out,” the man said.

  As the three men left, Thea became aware that they were standing apart from everyone else. The livestock keepers had moved their pigs away, and the stall holders at the nearest stalls had suddenly decided that they had business elsewhere. So although they could be seen across the market, there was no one close enough to hear what they were saying. She wondered again just who the men were, and how they had managed to gain such a stronghold over the markets without anyone in the Watch mentioning it.

  “We don’t want your kind around here,” the man said.

  Thea’s brows lifted, but he was looking at Niath.

  “People from the Citadel or mages?” Niath asked.

  “Both,” the man answered. He shifted his feet, deliberately turning his attention to Thea. “We don’t want your kind, either. But at least you’re one of us. Ask your questions and be gone.”

  Thea’s brows rose. He was being insulting to the mage, having already insulted the Archon. With anyone else, Thea would have suspected him of putting on a brave front in the face of the unsubtle threats Niath had made. But this man seemed too confident, too sure of himself. He did not seem stupid. Rather, he seemed sure that he was not going to be harmed by them. As if he knew something they did not. That made him dangerous.

  For a moment, Thea was tempted to insist that he speak to both her and Niath, to see what he would do and what he might reveal. It was a moment only. He had made his feelings about the mage clear, and she wanted to see what information she could get from him.

  “Do you know why the Archon soldiers were here?” Thea asked.

  The man’s lips curled in a sour smile with little humour in it, showing yellowing teeth. “Everyone here knew. They were shouting it so loud. Something abo
ut fake coins. Idiots.”

  “Who are the idiots? The soldiers?” Thea asked.

  “No. Those that thought they could fool the Ageless. We don’t get them here often,” the man said, looking away, across the market. He seemed to be looking at a particular point in the market. At a particular stall. But Thea didn’t want to turn her back on him to see what he was staring at.

  “The Ageless do come here sometimes, then?” Thea asked. It was not the question she had thought she would be asking, but she was following her instincts.

  “Not often,” the man answered, turning his attention back to her. He was still wearing that sour smile. “This market, and the fabric market at Meadowcroft. Must be something to their liking.”

  “How often, would you say?” she asked. “Once a week? Every few days? More? Less?”

  “I don’t keep track, little girl,” he answered, beginning to move away. “Once a week. Maybe. Not more than that. Now, I’m done with you.”

  He turned on his heel and stalked away, meeting his companions at the edge of the market and disappearing into a side street.

  The bubble of silence around them burst, a babble of conversation starting up around the market. Stall holders began to pack up their wares, even though it was early in the day. The animal herders were doing the same, tethering their livestock into lines for the journey home.

  It was not how most of them had expected to end the day, Thea was sure. Something about her arrival, or Niath’s, or the man they had spoken to had alarmed the stall holders enough that they would rather head for their homes, short of coins, than stay here.

  “Something’s wrong,” she said, low-voiced, to Niath.

  “Indeed,” he said.

  “You don’t need to sound so pleased about it,” she said, most of her attention on the few things that the unnamed man had said. He was not stupid. Not at all. He had very deliberately referred to another market. And the Ageless. “Meadowcroft,” she said abruptly. “We need to go there.”

  She was heading out of the market at the fastest walk she could manage before she had finished speaking, trying to remember where Sam had taken the horses.

  “But we’ve barely spoken to anyone here,” Niath said, keeping pace with her without apparent effort.

  “No. But remember what the man said. The Ageless come here perhaps once a week. That’s not often. And on that day, someone happened to hand them a forged coin.”

  “You don’t think it was an accident?” Niath asked.

  Thea didn’t answer, as she had spotted the horses ahead of them.

  “We need to move quickly,” she told Sam as she came up to Hern’s side.

  “Oh, he’ll move as quickly as you like,” Sam assured her. “He’s ready to go,” he added, as she stayed on her feet beside the horse.

  “Good.” Thea managed to get herself into the saddle without too much effort and turned the horse, urging him to a faster pace. Meadowcroft was not that far away, but she had a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach that she was already too late.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Sometimes she hated to be right.

  They could hear the screams before they saw the market. There were people running away, almost colliding with the horses.

  Thea slid off Hern’s back and handed her reins to Sam. “Keep him safe,” she requested, and ran forward without waiting for a reply, trusting Sam, weaving through the crowd of panicked humans.

  As she reached the marketplace she could feel the static crackle of an Ageless’ presence. It was full of ice, carrying the chill wind that she associated with the Ageless. The almost tasteless taste of air at high altitude.

  There was an Ageless in the air above what had been a marketplace. Splintered wood and scattered cloth were spilled on the ground under its wings, the brilliant white spread of feathers the only thing that Thea could see when she looked up.

  Falling falling falling. Down down down. Icy wind against her face, and Theo’s body far below her.

  “That’s Laurelle,” Niath said, snapping her out of memory and back to the present.

  “So it is,” Thea said, finally recognising the Ageless. The Citadel’s Archivist. In her human aspect, she was an elderly, delicate woman. With her humanity stripped away, she was so old it almost hurt to look at her, her face made of sharp planes and angles, the wings spread out around her holding her in the air with no apparent effort.

  A whimper from somewhere beneath Laurelle drew Thea’s attention. There. In amongst the broken wood and spoiled fabric. There was an old man lying on the ground. He was wearing formal, tailored clothing including a shirt that might have been white once but was now mostly red, the stain spreading to the ground around him.

  Thea was moving toward the man before she knew what she was doing, the crackle of Laurelle’s presence overhead raising the hairs across her body, setting off an itch across her shoulders.

  “Leave him,” Laurelle commanded. The voice was sharp as the ice of her presence, carrying a promise of violence.

  “He is a citizen of this city, and he is injured,” Thea said, without looking up, and without stopping.

  “He is a criminal,” Laurelle said. She sounded quite confident.

  Thea had reached the man’s side and knelt by him. As well as a deep gash along one side of his face, which was bleeding freely, it looked like one of his arms was broken, and there was a large piece of wood lodged in his abdomen.

  He stared up at her with pale grey eyes, no colour left in his face, breathing harsh. Dying.

  “What happened?” Thea asked him, keeping her voice gentle.

  “She killed me,” the man said, eyes going past Thea to the Ageless in the air above them.

  “He gave me a fake coin as his tribute,” Laurelle said. “He deserves his fate.”

  “A fake coin?” Thea asked, her eyes on the man.

  If she had not been looking at him, she would have missed the tiny flinch. The smallest movement.

  He had known.

  Somehow. He had known that the coin he had given to the Ageless was a fake.

  “Why?” she asked him. The Ageless were not known for their patience, and the last stall holder who had passed a fake coin to one of the Ageless had been badly injured.

  “No choice,” the man said, froth bubbling at his mouth. “We deserve to be free.”

  “You deserve to die,” Laurelle said, voice flat.

  She was too close, Thea realised, looking up. The Ageless had dropped out of the sky and folded her wings behind her so that there were pure white arches above her shoulders and head.

  “He is dying,” Thea said to the Ageless, and turned back to the human man. “Why?” she asked again.

  “The goddess will save me,” the man said, lips trembling, barely coherent. The last breath rattled out of him and his eyes glazed over, staring up at the sky where the Ageless had been moments before.

  “Goddess? What goddess?” Laurelle demanded. “Humans don’t have any other gods.”

  She spoke with the full authority and arrogance of a creature that had lived an unimaginable stretch of time. She thought she knew everything. The Ageless always did, Thea said to herself, her mind’s voice sounding bitter.

  “Well?” Laurelle demanded.

  “Well, what?” Thea asked, lifting her head to stare at the Ageless, meeting the full force of her ancient gaze.

  “What goddess?” Laurelle asked, impatience clear.

  “I don’t know,” Thea said, getting to her feet, and looking around the market. “Did you do all of this?” she asked the Ageless.

  “Humans forget their place. They need a reminder sometimes,” Laurelle said, looking around with a faint smile on her lips.

  Thea shivered. The market had been a long-standing feature of Meadowcroft. Stalls that had been in families for generations, lovingly tended, with the secrets of cloth-weaving and dyeing handed down from parent to child. Old rivalries, mostly good-natured. And lifelong friendships.

>   It was gone. The stalls were smashed into pieces, fabric torn. Among the shattered wood and fluttering cloth, Thea could see what she thought might be a person lying among the destruction.

  “He’s dead now,” Thea said, hearing her voice flat and cold. “There’s nothing more for you to do.”

  “I want answers, girl,” Laurelle said.

  “I am looking for them,” Thea told her, holding the Ageless’ eyes. “And if you had not killed this man, I might have more answers for you now.”

  Laurelle stared back at Thea, the weight of her presence sending chills across Thea’s skin. Then the archivist tilted her head, brows lowering.

  “You are not afraid of me. You should be.”

  “You won’t kill me,” Thea said. She could not have said how she knew. The certainty was there, core deep.

  “Foolish little girl. I can think of better uses for you.” Laurelle took a step forward, wings twitching, preparing to extend. The archivist was ancient, and sure of her authority. And despite her apparently delicate frame, she was immensely powerful. She could pick Thea up with one hand, take Thea with her, and no one would question it.

  “Then who would find answers?” Thea asked. Her mouth was dry, heart thumping in her throat.

  The Ageless stared back at her for a long moment, then her wings snapped out and she rose into the air, the downdraft of her wing beats rocking Thea on her feet. A few wing beats later and the Ageless was a mere speck in the sky. Laurelle hovered for a moment, too far away for Thea to see her expression, before the Ageless turned and flew back to the Citadel.

  “She could have killed you,” Niath said.

  “I know. But she was not going to,” Thea said, looking back at the dead man at her feet. “Unlike this man.”

  “The Watch is here,” Niath said. He was looking past her.

  Thea followed his gaze and saw a half dozen Watchmen coming into the market, and stopping as soon as they reached the destruction. She lifted a hand, beckoning them over.

  “Watch Officer Thea March,” she introduced herself.

  “You’re out of your district, Officer March,” the lead Watchman said. An older, heavily built man, he did not seem pleased to find her here. She wondered if he was related to her own Sergeant, who seemed permanently displeased to find her at his station, even though she was assigned there.