"The people at least deserve to learn where you have hidden yourself. You have deserted the usual places."
"Put anyone against me you dare, Veso. Now hand over the charm; it was given to you for keeping but belongs to the people."
"For the protection of your weakblood harlot?"
Luma stepped up to him. "I allow no one to call me that." She spoke in the local tongue.
Veso flinched. "You understand the true speech? A Derexhi?"
"I understand your thoughts, old man. And while you've been calling Priza a traitor, you've been thinking of how much you hate him, because he is war-leader and your best days are gone. Because you fear he will eclipse your meager deeds."
"Nonsense!"
"You've also been picturing a purse of gold—the purse you'll earn by informing the city watch that Priza was here."
Veso's features spasmed.
"That," Luma continued, "is why you wanted him to tell you where we're hiding."
Veso grasped at empty air. "Priza, the weakblood lies!"
Priza folded his arms. "Then why do I credit her, and not you?"
Luma asked, "What is it the Shoanti do with betrayers?"
"Veso knows what we do."
"Is it the boar pit?"
"No, the boar pit affords at least some chance. A traitor's fate comes faster."
Luma turned back to Veso. "Your thoughts did not tell me who promised you that purse. Was it my family?"
Veso studied her for an instant, as if working out whether she could still see inside his head. "No," he said.
"Who?"
"The city guard. Who else?"
"Old man," said Luma, "you had better hand over that charm. Then you should thank your ancestors that Priza has greater tasks before him today, to shield his people from harm. That will give you time to get out of Magnimar and never come back."
Veso fumbled in his tunic, withdrawing a plain clay rectangle about the size of his thumb, attached as a pendant to a strip of leather. He pulled the strip over his head and handed it to Priza.
"Have you any further questions for him?" Luma asked Priza.
"One does not normally address the dead," he answered.
They stepped onto the raft and into the rowboat, leaving Veso on the basalt.
Priza took an oar and rowed. "You spared his life."
Luma rowed with him, now finding it harder to keep up with his strokes. "You meant to slay him then and there? In front of dozens of his fellow quarrymen?"
"Yes."
When they were nearly to shore, Priza said, "When he said I've lost the trust of my people by joining you. He was lying about that also, yes?"
"I can hear thoughts, sometimes see them too. I can't always tell what's true."
"But you could with Veso."
Luma nodded. "That part was not a lie."
Priza set his mouth in a hard line. "Veso has an ambitious young cousin. In my absence, he scents an opportunity."
They put the boat ashore. "Do you need to go, then, and deal with this?" Luma asked.
"No," said Priza. "A man of honor completes his undertakings."
They returned to the others, sitting down on a lopsided bench. Noole passed them fish cakes on wooden plates. Priza wolfed his down and called for more. Luma ate absently, watching as a crew used a pulley contraption to hoist a basalt block onto the back of a heavy cart. The cart's axles, though shod in iron and doubly reinforced, bowed under the weight. A dandified, wide-bellied fellow in a doublet of furs and silk, a bright yellow pillbox hat raked upon his shaven head, paced and fretted as the laborers eased it into place. The extravagance of his garb identified him as a prosperous magician or arcane artificer; the eccentricity of his violet-dyed handlebar mustache sealed the impression. He fidgeted as the mechanism jammed, sending the slab tilting out of the cart. As the workmen ran to place themselves under it, muscling it back into place, Luma saw what made it so valuable, assuming it could be transported to the Golemworks in one piece. First, at over ten feet long, six feet wide, and nearly as many feet deep, it would count among the larger chunks of Irespan stone quarried this year. Second, near the top of the slab one could clearly see the outlines of a stony face. Artificers coveted such irregularities; a golem carved from such a slab often manifested prized abilities. The golem-maker feared for the integrity of the block, and the tremendous investment he must have made in it.
That was it. Golem-makers. Golems.
Here was the piece of the puzzle that never fit.
Her mind reeled back to the raid on the golem lair. Her sisters and brothers hadn't undertaken it only to kill her. Yes, they had intended for her to die, in a way they could explain to Father and the rest of their circle. They hadn't known about the grinder. Most likely they'd intended to leave her exposed in the course of the fight, so that a golem would fell her, and none of them would bear the responsibility of the final blow. When the fight didn't work as they hoped, the grinder proved a fortuitous back-up plan, and she was thrown in.
But why golems? What did that business have to do with Khonderian, or politics, or Korvosan mercenaries?
The lord-mayor's golem bodyguard. That was the connection.
The soiree had given Luma the last pieces she needed. Iskola and her Korvosan sympathizer friends wanted the city. To control it, they needed the lord-mayor's office. The movement lacked a leader, but could find one in Arrus. Where the faction's old lions were thought of as weary, decadent, unpopular, the Ushers might embrace a man like Arrus: handsome, heroic, with a cocky, bully-boy touch. That he had only just been sworn in as a councilor worked in his favor. It made him a fresh presence other factions might rally around. They could look at him without remembering an old slight or lingering squabble. Behind him, he boasted another, greater asset: Iskola, who understood intrigue. Too forbidding to seek power herself, she would weigh the deals, and let Arrus complete them.
That was the purpose behind Iskola's use of the squad to place other councilors in her debt. Even as Randred still lived, she'd been building the alliances she'd need when he was out of the way, and Arrus in his council seat. As but one faction among one constituency, the imperials could not elevate him. With the right allies, they might pull it off.
But none of this mattered with Haldemeer Grobaras still breathing. All the factions danced to his tune. No one dared make the first move against him. Perhaps a decade from now, his grip would falter, and someone would ease him out. But a decade was a long interval, one in which Arrus would go gray, collect enemies, and become one among many amid the bickering din of the council chamber. By the time Grobaras wore out his welcome, Arrus would be as pale and diminished a figure as any.
So they had to kill the lord-mayor. Her father's murder, and their attempt to kill her, had been necessary preludes. Randred, because Arrus had to take his council seat. She, because she'd been asking too many questions. But the death this all hinged on was Grobaras's.
With him gone, other would-be mayors would suddenly find themselves already running behind. While they had resigned themselves to the long continuance of the Grobaras regime, Iskola had her allies in place, her candidate ready.
There was no guarantee Arrus would win, but the game began with the odds stacked his way.
Provided Haldemeer Grobaras could be assassinated. He held two trumps against this. One, the enchantment that turned back arrows and crossbow bolts. Two, the golem of gears and brass, which would, if defeated, explode in a rain of deadly shrapnel. Since its acquisition, and the spreading word of this capability, not a single close-up attempt had been made on the lord-mayor's life. As hated as he might be, none of his aspiring killers wished to die alongside him. You might hire fools to try it, but fools would fail.
The Korvosans in Cheiskaia Nirodin's guest house had not struck Luma as fools. That had to be why Iskola and her allies had brought them here. That's why they were supposed to stay out of sight, first at the Grand Arch squat, then at the Nirodin manse. They would kill Grobar
as and fade away, leaving their patrons to maneuver for his position. But they would research his bodyguard first, discover the golem trick, and decline to strike. Unless their patrons supplied a way around it.
And that's where the golems came in. The raid on the golem workshop was only incidentally about money to spend on political favors. Iskola hadn't been looking for the dampening ring of Laurdin Iket merely to sell it. She'd played it as incidental, a bonus if they should happen to find it, when its recovery was the entire reason for the raid.
Iskola must have been surer of the device's presence in the workshop than she'd let on. Maybe one of the salvagers made the wrong inquiry at the library, and word got back to Iskola through her various arcane contacts. The details of that were immaterial. What mattered was what she intended to do with the artifact now that she had it: to counter, control, or deactivate Haldemeer Grobaras's clockwork golem.
And Khonderian? Iskola feared that he'd stumbled onto the Korvosans. He might have been onto them, or not; it didn't much matter. Iskola decided that he was too dangerous a piece to leave on the board. So one of her siblings—perhaps Ontor, perhaps Ulisa—had killed him. When they found that Luma still lived, they went back to plant evidence, to keep her on the defensive.
Luma reviewed the details, trying to think like her sister. They all fit. It was the sort of plan she'd cook up—calculating, manifold, hinged on an arcane detail, and performed at a remove.
The Korvosans were packing up. They might merely be headed to a third safe house, but she had to assume otherwise. If they were ready to strike, when would it happen?
Of course. The Arvensoar rededication ceremony. To instill maximum shock and dismay, they would have the lord-mayor killed at a public event. Other contenders for the lord-mayor's seat would be unable to openly lobby for it during the period of stunned, reverential mourning that would doubtless ensue. Meanwhile, Iskola would have her factions already lined up, giving Arrus yet another head start.
Was this truth, or conjecture? Attuning to the citysong, Luma heard its keening distress, its drums pounding with portent. An upheaval was imminent, one that would affect Magnimar's every district, from Alabaster to Rag's End.
She leapt from the bench. If they made good speed, they might reach the base of the Arvensoar just in time.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Parade Ground
Luma explained as they ran. There was no time to waste on side streets, or on hiding, so she led them along the widest, most obvious route, the Avenue of Sails. Now she changed herself; to risk being recognized and stopped at this stage would be an unforgivable act of hubris. She reached into the citysong to find its catalog of bodies and faces. It had to be someone who might conceivably rush along in this improbable company. Her perceptions rocketed to the sellsword exchange, a few blocks west in the bazaar. There she found a callow, pox-scarred warrior, his jaw set in a perpetual overbite. She borrowed a semblance of his face, softening its distinctiveness. From the man's lanky companion she modeled her new body, which she grew into as she ran, her limbs growing longer, her hips thinning, her already-modest bosom disappearing.
"Disconcerting!" shouted Noole, struggling to keep up.
Sensing trouble, carters and pedestrians alike moved over to let them pass, clearing a wide swath down the middle of the avenue. An almost visible wave of anxiety coursed ahead of them. A horse reared up, panicked, dislodging its rider from his saddle. Behind it, a carriage painted in the gaudy colors of a rising merchant house backed up into a cart stacked with barrels.
They sprinted along the avenue's sharp turn, from north-south to northeast-southwest. Two urchins pointed at them, staring, until an older orphan pulled them from sight.
At a point parallel to the Arvensoar, they turned to the south. From here, Luma knew, any route would channel them through narrower, crowded streets. She checked the sun's position in the sky. They still stood some chance of reaching the plaza before the ceremony began. All depended on the planned timing of the Korvosan attack.
Whistles shrieked after them. Glancing back, Luma saw guards in Derexhi uniform demanding a halt. Hendregan reversed to face them.
"Don't hurt them," Luma said.
"Hmp," replied Hendregan, loosing a glowing bead. It arced up into the air, seeming to hang in the air over the sentinels' heads for a split second. They scattered. The bead dropped onto empty cobblestones, then effloresced into a wall of flame. Hot stones flew up into the air and pelted back down again. Luma and the others plunged on, the whistles silenced. The family's hirelings had orders to intervene on behalf of public safety, but these only went so far. They were not paid enough to place themselves in the path of a second such spell.
"We may face a fight when we get there," Luma panted. "Hope you're not using up your best magics!"
Hendregan laughed. "That was an illusion only!"
Onlookers pressed themselves into alcoves or hopped up onto stoops as the group barreled past Lowcleft shops. A white-bearded man drew his sword but hugged it close to his chest. Up ahead, a juggler let his clubs fall into the street as he withdrew to the shelter of an alleyway.
The exertion caught up with them as they reached Lantern Row, where the workshops of lampmakers clustered. Luma reached into the citysong, letting its fearful drumbeats fill her. She harmonized her footfalls to their beat, and found the strength to speed up again. The others increased their pace in response: first Melune, then Priza and Thaubnis, with Noole and Hendregan lagging a few steps behind.
Crowds thickened on Hourglass Lane, a few streets away from the parade grounds. Carriages parked on either side reduced the street to a narrow passageway. Hawkers pushing carts stocked with salted nuts, colorful ribbons, or clay statues of the Arvensoar obstructed it further.
"Scatter them!" Luma yelled. She jumped onto a carriage roof, whirling her sickle. Priza copied her, darting along the opposite chain of empty coaches, axe held overhead. Terrified citizens squeezed out of sight, letting the others pass.
Reaching the last of the coaches, Luma vaulted down. A broad-shouldered young man stood blocking her path, dull features arrested in confusion, a mace held at half-alert. She reached into the citysong, drawing forth a remembrance of V'kka, the lizard-woman stevedore who saw conspiracies around every corner. Green scales covered her skin. Spines jutted from her head as it elongated into a snout filled with reptilian teeth. She opened this freshly formed mouth and hissed, unfurling a long, pink tongue. The dumbfounded man yawped and sank to his knees. With clawed, webbed feet, Luma kicked him aside. Lashing her iguana-like tail, she bounded into the throng, stampeding celebrants left and right.
Hourglass Lane emptied, then filled again, from its opposite end. Panicked people now surged into the street from the Arvensoar end, Luma's destination. A woman in gown and wimple wailed, a crossbow bolt jutting from her hand. Two stumbling porters carried an unconscious grandee, a red blot spreading through his tunic.
The attack had already begun.
Unsure of her coordination in lizard form, Luma allowed it to melt away. A burst of dizzying energy struck her as her body relaxed into its familiar shape. Thrusting her hand into her trickbag, she once again borrowed the innate talent of a scuttling cricket and launched her body onto the wall of the nearest shop. Crawling horizontally from storefront to storefront, she bypassed the press of fleeing celebrants, continuing on to the verge of the Arvensoar parade grounds.
A scene of chaos awaited, bounded by emptied bleachers populated only by a handful of trampled or injured onlookers. Behind the bleachers cowered dozens of spectators too terrified to flee. Among them huddled guests from the Nirodin soiree. Luma spotted Sutia Turos, Bonto Feste, and the skeptical matron Histia. Bonto's nose had been broken; with rapier out, he interposed himself between the ladies and the fray.
Other unfortunates, dead or nearly so, had made it off the bleachers but no further. The majority were ordinary soldiers. The sprawled heaps in which they lay testified to the Korvosans' might.
The lord-mayor and members of his bodyguard sprawled motionless on the cobblestones. Three of their comrades still stood, wounded and weaving, backs against the Seacleft.
Of the Korvosans, one had already fallen. One of the bruisers splayed near the golem, his head pulped.
It steamed and clanked, puffs of green vapor spitting from a tear in its copper breastplate. The spell-tosser darted around it, narrowly evading its flailing metal fists. In her hand she clutched the dampening ring of Laurdin Iket. She ducked and weaved in search of an opening that would allow her to slap it onto the creature. Luma presumed that it had been the dead bruiser's job to draw the golem's attack while the magician attached the ring. If so, he had succeeded only too well.
The golem grabbed the woman, pulling her tight to its chest. A bloody mist sprayed up between them. The woman screamed and jerked, then fell away from the construct. Saw blades, once hidden in its chest, had popped up to shred flesh and bone. The spell-tosser slumped to the square, slain, her ruined chest cavity laid bare for all to see.
The golem stopped moving, its exposed saws whirring to a slow halt. Stuck to its back was the dampening ring. Iskola's recovered item had done its work. The golem was defeated but not destroyed, and so would not be sending its signature rain of lethal shrapnel blasting through the plaza.
The remaining Korvosans advanced on the surviving bodyguards. The two-sworded woman charged them, grabbing a bodyguard by the arm and wheeling him into the fray. The backstabber plunged a blade deep into his spine.
Red-black energy wailed around the devil-priestess's hand. She lunged at a bodyguard. The hellforce screamed like the souls of the damned as it entered his chest. He clutched his heart and sank to his knees.
The hirsute Korvosan swordsman with the emerald orb in his eye socket launched himself upon the third bodyguard, thrusting expertly into the space between his armor's breast- and backplates.
The swordswoman scanned the crowd's edges. Whatever she searched for, she didn't find. Her forehead creased, annoyance shading into fear. Luma didn't have to read her mind to guess what the matter was: they'd been promised a means of escape, and it hadn't arrived.
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