False Dawn: Ageless Mysteries - Book 2

by Vanessa Nelson

  “I’m sorry to trouble you, mage, but do you have any more of that oatcake?” she asked.

  “Yes, of course.” Niath seemed pleased. He produced two wrapped pieces of the oatcake and handed them across to her, taking another from his pocket for himself.

  As she was finishing the last piece of oatcake, a shadow appeared at the door. Dina. She was out of breath, hair tangled.

  “We worked it out,” she said, grinning ear to ear.

  “That’s good,” Thea said. “Worked what out?”

  “The grasses. We worked it out. Caroline and me. Come on, I need to tell the others,” Dina said, and vanished from the doorway, footsteps heading along the outside corridor in the direction of Ware’s office.

  “Do you feel able to move?” Niath asked. It was a sincere question.

  “I think so.” Thea gathered her feet under her and pushed herself upright. So far, so good. She took a tentative step forward and didn’t fall over. Progress. “Yes,” she said. “But I might need another chair soon,” she added, as she wobbled slightly going through the doorway.

  She didn’t catch Niath’s reply, distracted by the crack that ran from the top to the bottom of the door. It had been solid wood, seasoned and aged, but had been no match for an Ageless’ temper.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Sutter was bringing an extra chair into Ware’s office as Thea arrived. She glanced into the room to find it had been slightly rearranged to accommodate extra chairs. Iason and Dina were already there, Dina drumming her fingers impatiently on her knee. Ware was behind his desk, scowling at a piece of paper.

  Sutter stepped aside to let Thea and Niath into the room, then closed the door behind him, settling on the chair in front of the door.

  That left two chairs for Niath and Thea. Two of the comfortable guest chairs that normally lived in this room. Thea took the nearest, not caring if it was rude.

  “The other prisoners are safe,” Sutter told Thea. “Although they are not talking.”

  “Alayla only gave her command to Jirkar,” Thea said. She bumped her injured arm, trying to find a comfortable position in the chair, and hissed as pain shot through her. Everyone in the room politely pretended not to notice as she brushed tears from her face. Even with Iason’s painkillers, it hurt.

  “We’ll get to that in a moment,” Ware said. “I think we need to hear Dina’s news before she bursts.” His mouth curved up in rare mischief as he looked at the scientist.

  “It’s a dye,” Dina said, leaning forward, then went on, the words tumbling over each other. “The grass I mean. Only, it’s not grass but some kind of seaweed. Anyway. It’s used in the islands to dye cloth, and some jewellers have used it, too. It dyes metal as well as cloth.”

  “Dina, it has been a long day,” Ware said, pinching the bridge of his nose. “What does this have to do with the coins and bliss and blue skin?”

  “The Archon’s mid-value coins are tinted blue,” Thea said slowly, the full significance of what Dina had said slowly sinking in. “It’s the one thing that no one had been able to fake before.”

  “Well, no. All the dyes that anyone had tried before just burned up in the forging process,” Dina said, still on the edge of her seat. “But not this stuff. For some reason, it doesn’t burn off. Perfect for metal working. But it’s poisonous. Has to be handled carefully when it’s used in metal.”

  Everyone was silent for a moment when Dina finished, letting the full implications of that sink in.

  “It’s not native to the city,” Thea said slowly.

  “No. Caroline found a reference to it in one of her old books. Your mother has a truly impressive library of herb lore, Thea,” Dina added.

  “That she does,” Thea agreed.

  “Not native to the city. So that’s why none of us recognised it,” Ware said. “How would someone know about such a thing?”

  “That was what I was wondering, sir,” Thea said. “Someone who had travelled to the islands, perhaps.”

  “I don’t think any of Jirkar’s gang had been out of the city before,” Sutter said.

  “It’s not something that anyone in the city would find by accident. It would have to be ordered through one of the traders. The metal worker used it, though. He must have come across it before,” Thea said. “Jirkar didn’t know what it was, otherwise he wouldn’t have used it in the bliss he made.”

  “It’s possible that the trader who brought it in didn’t know what it was, either,” Dina said, mouth settling into a flat line. “Caroline thinks she knows who might have brought the seaweed in. One of the traders has connections to the islands. Caroline had no good opinion of him. Said he didn’t know what he was doing half the time. Also said that quite a lot of the market herbalists use him.”

  “Oh,” Thea said, straightening up, the pieces fitting together in her head at long last. “So, the trader brings the grass, er, seaweed into the city. Jirkar said that there was too much of it. So the trader must have sold some to Delilah.”

  “It would be just like her,” Dina said, shaking her head. “She always fancied she knew more than she did.” There was a story there, Thea suspected, and wondered if Dina would tell it. But the scientist fell silent.

  “What do we think happened then?” Ware asked, seemingly interested despite himself.

  “I think Delilah was genuinely worried when she learned about the effect her soap had. She hadn’t expected that,” Thea said slowly. “And she might have known, one way or another, that the grass had been brought in for Jirkar. She seemed afraid of him.” That felt right to Thea. It would explain Delilah’s odd reaction when Jirkar and his men had turned up. The herbalist had been afraid. Not just of the gang, but also because she had used something that Jirkar was also using, and had not wanted him to find out.

  But Delilah had still ended up dead.

  “So she follows him, only she ends up finding the furnace instead,” Ware concluded, mouth twisting. “Unlucky for her.”

  “It makes sense,” Thea said, shaking her head slightly. “If she’d been a better herbalist, she would still be alive. Anyone with skill would have tested the ingredients before they sold the soap.”

  “Well, we know that Jirkar wasn’t the one behind it all. He had no idea what the seaweed was,” Niath said. “Alayla? The metal worker?”

  “Alayla? Goddess of destruction? What does she have to do with anything?” Dina asked.

  Before Thea could answer, Ware reached into his desk drawer and produced a tall bottle and several glasses.

  “We’re going to need a drink for this one, I think,” he said.

  ~

  Thea provided the barest details of their encounter with the arrak and the supposed goddess. Niath added a few details of his own.

  It was not enough for Dina. She had many more questions.

  Thea was growing hoarse by the time Dina had run out of questions. Both Dina and Iason were frustrated that the Ageless had removed the arrak’s body before they had been given a chance to study it.

  And none of them had an explanation for Alayla.

  Thea was interested to note that the others seemed to share her scepticism that the woman was the ancient goddess of destruction come to life.

  She also sensed that the others shared her frustration. The forgers had been stopped. The furnace had been discovered, and the metal worker scared away. And, if Jirkar was to be believed, he had no more metal to turn into coins.

  She remembered the interior of the Treasury, and the dull acceptance of the Conscripted workers. Knowing their lives depended on the whim of the Treasurer. They were safe now. The coins had not come from the Citadel’s mint, and there was proof of that if Treasurer Winchell needed it. That was some good, at least. The Conscripted were safe a little longer.

  The Watch would be on the lookout for any fake coins. Niath offered to assist Odilia in tracking down the remaining forgeries. An offer which Ware gladly accepted.

  The Ageless would be satisfied. The t
hreat of Ageless and Archon soldiers on the streets of Accanter was gone. That was definitely a good thing.

  The mysteries of the poisoned bliss and blue soap were also explained. That was also a good thing.

  Thea would be able to give Genric Smith and William Young answers. They were not good answers, but being able to provide some explanation was a good thing.

  And yet there was so much unknown and unresolved.

  There was the unsatisfactory death of Piet Riga. Paid by the gang to keep an eye on the markets, and occasionally hand out fake coins. Thea had never got an answer as to why he had thought he had no choice but to hand Laurelle the forged coin that had made the archivist lose her temper and kill him. The people who might have been able to give her more information, Margo Corris and Jirkar, were both dead. And while Thea might believe that Jirkar or one of his men had given Margo the bliss that had killed her, she had no proof of that.

  The three men left in Watch custody were not the masterminds. They were petty bullies, like Jirkar had been. They were unlikely to know anything more helpful. Apart from Milo, who should, at least, be able to tell them his cousin’s name.

  The two men who had used the fyr na dathan had not been found. They had vanished, along with Alayla. Thea did not dare to hope that they had all left the city. Which meant that somewhere in the city was a supposed goddess and two men who wielded an ancient magical weapon that could hurt the Ageless.

  Reardon had not seemed interested in hunting the magic-wielding men down. He had stalked out of the building in a foul temper. Thea did not for one moment believe he had forgotten about the magical weapon. He was a soldier. A Commander in the Archon’s army. No one got to that position by ignoring details. He might not have wanted to pursue the matter now. Or he might not have wanted to involve the Watch. Thea shivered as she considered the implications of that. The threat of Ageless and Archon soldiers on Accanter’s streets was lifted for now. But it was not gone. Reardon would not forget.

  The list of unknown and unresolved matters did not end with the two men. There was Alayla. A woman with flames for eyes claiming to be the ancient goddess of destruction, who had vanished into thin air.

  And there was the Hand. The Hand of the goddess. Jirkar was dead. But for all his arrogance, he had not been in charge. Not even close to it. Somewhere out there in the city there were other people who followed the goddess. Who believed her claims. Thea knew that she had not seen the last of Alayla. Or the Hand.

  Even worse, somewhere in the world was a mage, or maybe more than one, that knew how to make a goddess and had sent her to Accanter. And Thea had no idea how or why.

  The Ageless might be satisfied. For now, at least. Thea was not.

  ~

  Niath insisted that he and Sam escort her home, the horses moving at a slow walk to avoid jolting her injured arm too much. They refused an invitation to come inside, leaving Thea to make her own way into the kitchen.

  Every part of her ached, from her hair to her toes. The painkiller that Iason had given her had long since worn off. And she had realised on the slow journey home that she had a long, shallow gash on her upper arm, chill evening air brushing against her skin. Iason had spread salve over it. She barely felt it, next to the broken bones.

  Her mother was stirring something in a pot on the stove and turned and froze, spoon held suspended over the mixture.

  “Sit. Sit down, now,” her mother said, abandoning the pot and the spoon, and coming around the table to pull a chair out. “That looks professional,” she said, staring at the splint around Thea’s wrist and arm.

  “Iason. Physician Pallas,” Thea said. Her voice sounded thin. “He gave me some painkiller, too.”

  “Long worn off, by the look of you,” her mother said. She was already at the shelf, fetching a familiar bottle with the foul-tasting potion in it. She handed Thea a glass half-full of the mix. “Drink it all.”

  Thea made a face, but drank the disgusting liquid. It would help. She knew it would help. But she would never, ever get used to the taste.

  “Is it over?” her mother asked.

  “No. Not nearly. But it’s done for now,” Thea answered, swallowing a lump in her throat and the urge to cry. She was tired. And sore. And wanted nothing more than to curl into bed and fall asleep to the sound of Gilbert’s purr. But she knew that it would be a while before she could sleep, her mind still turning on the events of the past few days.

  “So your part is done for the moment,” her mother said, putting a hand on Thea’s shoulder. Her uninjured side.

  “Iason and Ware want me to take time off until I’m healed,” Thea said. She hadn’t meant to say that. Her voice sounded high and thin and not like her at all.

  “Good. You look exhausted. A few days off will do you some good.”

  Thea’s eyes prickled with heat. In this city, no matter what else might be happening, she could always rely on her mother. She felt more tears gathering and swallowed them.

  “A new recipe, mama?” she asked instead. Whatever was on the stove smelled delicious, but unfamiliar.

  “No. An old one. One of our neighbours brought us some lamb. I don’t think we’ve had lamb for a long time.”

  “No, we haven’t,” Thea agreed.

  By the time she had a bowl of food in front of her, the ache in her body had lessened. The stew was delicious, and she said so.

  “Dina seemed to think that we helped,” her mother said, when they had both eaten. “Did we?”

  “You did. It was the final piece of the puzzle. Thank you.”

  “Will you tell me about it?” her mother asked.

  Thea remembered another evening a few weeks before, settled outside next to the memorial stone for her brother. Telling her mother and the ghost of her brother what had happened had helped.

  “Yes.”

  So Thea sat in her mother’s kitchen, with several mugs of tea, and told her mother about forged coins and the Hand of the goddess.

  The telling took some time, and there was light outside the window when she finished. Too early for the morning. This was the beautiful, almost silver light that would tempt unwary and inexperienced travellers into setting off on their journey, only to be swallowed in darkness again not long after. It had been a long time since she and her mother had travelled here, yet she could still remember the false mornings. Huddled under a blanket, waiting for the true light of dawn and another day ahead.

  The night wasn’t over. Not just yet. It would be a while before the sun actually rose, but a new day was on its way.

  THANK YOU

  Thank you very much for reading FALSE DAWN, Ageless Mysteries - Book 2. I do hope that you’ve enjoyed continuing Thea’s adventures (and seeing more of Niath, too) as much as I have enjoyed continuing her story and exploring her world more deeply.

  It would be great, if you have five minutes, if you could leave an honest review at the store you got it from. Reviews are really helpful for other readers to decide whether the book is for them, and also help me get visibility for my books - thank you.

  The next book in the series, MORNING TRAP, Ageless Mysteries - Book 3, is available to pre-order now. I expect to release this in early October 2021, and you can find it here: http://books2read.com/u/bPQZaA

  There is a short prequel for the series available to my newsletter subscribers. If you want to get hold of the prequel, and be kept up to date with what I’m working on, you can sign up for my newsletter and contact me at the website: http://www.taellaneth.com.

  ALSO BY THE AUTHOR

  Ageless Mysteries

  DEADLY NIGHT, Book 1 - http://books2read.com/u/4ERokz

  FALSE DAWN, Book 2 - http://books2read.com/u/3R8leY

  MORNING TRAP, Book 3 - pre-order now, available October 2021 - http://books2read.com/u/bPQZaA

  The Hundred series (complete)

  THE GATHERING, Book 1 - http://books2read.com/u/bPx9qx

  THE SUNDERING, Book 2 - http://books2read.com/u/3LRDWw


  THE RECKONING, Book 3 - http://books2read.com/u/38QZ8V

  THE RENDING, Book 4 - http://books2read.com/u/4ERk6E

  THE SEARCHING, Book 5 - http://books2read.com/u/4XQX7N

  THE RISING, Book 6 - http://books2read.com/u/31lGza

  The Taellaneth series (complete)

  CONCEALED, Book 1 - http://books2read.com/u/mggZMX

  REVEALED, Book 2 - http://books2read.com/u/4AOz9k

  BETRAYED, Book 3 - http://books2read.com/u/m2RVgo

  TAINTED, Book 4 - http://books2read.com/u/47Nr2E

  CLOAKED, Book 5 - http://books2read.com/u/4jA292

  Taellaneth Box Set (all five books in one e-book)

  Taellaneth Complete Series (Books 1-5): http://books2read.com/u/bzeo0j

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Vanessa Nelson lives in Scotland, United Kingdom where she tries to fit her day job in between writing and tending to the demands of two spoiled cats and a giant dog. As far as the cats are concerned, they should always come first. The dog lets her know when he’s not getting enough attention by chewing the house.

  You can find out more information at the following places:

  Website: http://www.taellaneth.com

  Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/Taellaneth