The Necromancer Series Box Set

by Deck Davis

  “Dying doesn’t erase all the bad things you did in life. My gut aches for a kid forced to live like that, but it doesn’t just rub it all out. Come on; the guardship get a little pissy when we’re late.”

  “Back at the academy,” Jakub said, “they told us that moonlighting was grounds for expulsion. We couldn’t use soul essence for anything other than academy-approved tasks. Course, the instructors turned a blind eye when their favorite pupils did it. The thing is, when you tell someone they can’t do something, what’re they gonna do? We all knew what kind of jobs out there, what people like the guardship need necromancers for.”

  “Then this will be a piece of cake. You know, the way you speak, the way you carry yourself; it’s like looking at my younger brother. I can see Ian’s teaching coming through you.”

  Jakub had to hold back a grin then, since he wasn’t the greatest at taking compliments.

  He needed work, and Witas was offering him work in his field. That was more than he could have hoped for. But there was a problem.

  “I know what the guardship will want me to do, but there’s a slight issue with that.”

  “Did you forget your spellwords? Are you scared of accidentally creating a zombie? You won’t use your necromancy on Tuesday on religious grounds? What is it?”

  “I need soul essence to use necromancy, and I need a soul necklace to hold it in. Mine’s broken.”

  “Lemme see.”

  Jakub shook his head. A necromancer never gave someone their soul necklace even for a second.

  Then again, that was a rule the academy had drilled into him, most likely because they didn’t want to pay for a replacement.

  If the Cleric could fix the necklace Tomkins had given him, what did he have to lose?

  He showed it to Witas. “See? It’s cracked.”

  “This is artificed?” said Witas.

  “The crystal where the essence gets stored is artificed, yeah.”

  “No problem. Let’s go and see a pal of mine. Archibald will be able to fix this no problem.”

  “Archibald as in, Archibald’s Artificery and Magical Items?”

  “You know him?”

  “We’ve met,” said Jakub.

  He remembered their last conversation, one that had somehow turned from the old trader trying to gouge him on price, to Jakub almost drawing his sword. All over a letter.

  He sat rigid. The letter.

  He checked his pockets and his inventory bag, but it was gone.

  “I’ll be one minute,” he said.

  He left Witas at the table and rushed up to his room, but there was nothing of his left behind. It was gone - the gods-damned pickpocket had stolen Henwright’s letter from him.

  He went back downstairs to Witas, feeling an emptiness in his stomach.

  CHAPTER 18

  It made a horrible kind of sense. Or the beginnings of sense, at least. Henwright had given Jakub an artificed letter. No name, no idea who it had to go to.

  Instead, Henwright had told him that the recipient of the letter would be able to track it by its artificed gum; the same mana-infused sealant that stopped anyone else reading what was inside.

  The pickpocket must have stolen the letter from him back in the Boarhead tavern, and the person waiting for the letter had tracked it all the way to the kid. Then, having found him, they’d killed him.

  The twisting of his stomach made him regret eating his breakfast.

  Jakub was supposed to have the letter; the recipient was supposed to find him.

  It was him who was supposed to end up on train tracks, severed in two, and instructor Henwright was the one who’d sent him to that fate.

  “You’ve gone paler than the moon’s bare arse,” said Witas.

  “I…you ever have one of those sentences you can’t spit out? The words just disappear?”

  “Listen, Archie isn’t a nice guy. I get it, he’s meaner than a dockside cat. But Gods, if I’d known you were gonna react like this, I’d have suggested someone else to fix your necklace. Artificers are ten a penny in Dispolis, it’s just that Archie is a pal, and he does good work for good rates. The guy never, ever misses a deadline.”

  “It’s not that,” said Jakub.

  The barkeep came to collect his empty breakfast plate.

  “Enjoy the grub?”

  “Perfect,” said Witas. “Apart from the bacon. A little crispy for my taste, but your sausages are a delicacy. Nine out of ten.”

  “Can I have a beer?” said Jakub.

  The barkeep nodded. “Rough night? Well, one hair of the dog coming up. And you?”

  Witas shook his head. “I’m working today.”

  When the barkeep left, came back with a pint of amber ale, then left again, Jakub gulped a quarter of it.

  “You gonna tell me why you’ve become a crank all of a sudden?” said Witas.

  Jakub drank another quarter of the beer and then let it settle in his stomach.

  He told Witas about Henwright giving him the letter, how the pickpocket had bumped into him and stolen it, and the conclusions he’d drawn from what happened to him.

  “Does my brother know about this letter?” said Witas.

  Jakub hadn’t considered that. Irvine, Madam Lolo, Henwright, they’d all been in his inquiry. Henwright hinted that he hadn’t voted to expel him, but his word was bullshit.

  Could all three of them have voted for his expulsion so they could set all of this in motion?

  No. Why would they do it? What could they have to gain? If the person tracking the letter had intended to kill Jakub, there had to be a good reason, and he couldn’t figure out why Irvine, Lolo, or Henwright would want that.

  “I don’t know if Irvine was in on it,” said Jakub. “They could all be implicit. Or, it could be a coincidence that the kid who stole from me died the same night. Who knows?”

  “Ian wouldn’t be involved in this. That wasn’t what I meant. What I meant was, did he see Hensworth…”

  “Henwright,” said Jakub.

  “Did he see hen-whatever-the-fuck-his-name-is give you the letter?”

  “No, it was just us, but not seeing something isn’t the same as not knowing.”

  “You can usually trust a bastard who never tries to hide it. And believe me, Ian never, ever, hides what a bastard he is.”

  “I’m sure as hell not going back to the academy for a while, anyway.”

  “It’s just something to bear in mind. Let’s find out more, then maybe talk to my brother.”

  “I need another drink,” Jakub said.

  He raised his glass to finish the beer, when Witas put his hand on the rim and pushed it down.

  “It’s fine to get drunk out of your mind when you’ve got nothing to do. But when you have a job, you work. When you need to think, you don’t send your mind on the merry beer tour, first stop slurred words, last stop a five-hundred-gold tab at a whorehouse that you can’t pay. Come on; sitting on our arses won’t tell us anything. The best thing is to see the kid, so let’s go and get your necklace fixed.”

  CHAPTER 19

  Jakub opened the door of Archibald’s shop, making the bell ring and disturbing the old artificer-come-trader, who was sitting behind his counter and fiddling with a wind-up duck.

  “You again?” said Archibald. “Brought more tat for me, or do you want to shake your sword around like a boy bragging about his cock?”

  “Let’s let bygones be bygones,” said Jakub.

  “No, let’s get the guards in here,” said Archibald. Then, he saw Witas enter behind Jakub, chewing on an iced bun he’d insisted they stop for on the way. Archibald smiled. “Witas! This is the lad I was telling you about; the one sniffing around for the Black Cleric.”

  “He sniffed me out, alright. Don’t worry, he’s a pal.”

  “I’ve known you long enough to stop asking questions about the company you keep. You’re old and stupid enough to sort out your own trouble.”

  “And a good morning to you, my fri
end. Glad we caught you in a cheery mood. You ready for some good old fashioned artificery today?”

  “I have a noblewoman coming to collect this damn wind-up duck at eleven; apparently if the duck doesn’t look and act real, her child will have a fit. Do these people think mana grows on trees? Well, maybe to them it actually does.”

  “This is important,” said Witas.

  “Does it involve your new friend?”

  “Jakub’s got a little problem with his necklace.”

  “Why didn’t you say so? For him, I’ll just drop everything. Never mind that my father built this shop brick by brick, never mind that the only reason I can compete with the hundreds of other artificers in Dispolis is that I finish jobs when I say I will. For your new friend, I’m willing to break my word to a customer who pays full price.”

  “Look, I’m sorry about before,” said Jakub. “I’d had a rough couple of days.”

  “I’ve had a rough decade, and you don’t see me pulling a sword.”

  “You did try and confiscate my stuff.”

  “As an artificer, I have a duty to the guardship to-”

  “Actually,” said Witas, “this is for the guardship. They found a stiff, and they need a necro to take a look at it. This lad is the only one in town, but he’s got a case of essence impotence.”

  Jakub took out his soul necklace and put it on the counter. “I just need it fixed so it can hold essence again.”

  “Fine, since you have Witas with you. Leave it with me,” said Archibald. “Come back in the morning.”

  “No good. I need to get to the body before the resurrection window closes.”

  “I don’t care about your necromancy fiddle-faddle, boy. Tomorrow, and that’s me being nice.”

  “Hey, Archie,” said Witas. “A couple of guards are walking past your shop. You mind if I invite them in so I can explain that we might not be able to help with the corpse they have in their headquarters? Course, while they’re in here they might glance over the counter and catch sight of your back room, and we know what kind of things you’ve got going on in there…”

  “Give it here,” said Archie, holding his hand out. His nails were unnaturally long, most likely to help with some of his intricate work, and his fingers were covered in grease.

  Jakub pushed the necklace toward him. While Archie examined the necklace, Witas picked up the wind-up duck, turning it over.

  “They really pay to have kid’s toys artificed?” he said.

  “Put the duck down,” said Archibald.

  While the artificer tinkered with the necklace, Witas walked around the shop, looking at the things on the shelves. There were rows of potion vials, enchanted jewellery, some low-level weapons, and even a row of alchemy ingredients.

  Jakub stayed at the counter, because he had a few questions he needed Archibald to answer.

  “I don’t know much about artificery,” he said, “but I know the artificed gum is rare, right? The mana seal stuff is pretty hard to get.”

  Archibald didn’t even look up from the necklace. “There’s only one place in Dispolis that makes it now.”

  “Where?”

  “Teller and Turlock; they have a workshop in the Rats’ Palace.”

  “Rats’ Palace?”

  “He means the sewers,” said Witas, holding a jar of dried bat droppings. “Back before Dispolis was the capital, poor folks lived down there. It wasn’t a sewer then, obviously. The guards turfed them out under royal orders when bandits started using the tunnels to get access to basements, but there are a few businesses that have a license to trade out of some of the old houses. You know; bomb makers, tinkers, alchemists. People who make dangerous stuff that are best left to do their work below Dispolis. You need a permit to even go down there these days.”

  “We need to go visit Teller and Turlock, then,” said Jakub.

  “I’ll need a good reason to go into the Rats’ Palace,” said Witas. “A guy I know lost his arm down there.”

  “Are you talking about Jeremiah? Wasn’t his arm made of wood to begin with?” said Archibald.

  “Maybe, but the Rats’ Palace is no place to go for a wander.”

  “Henwright hasn’t left the academy grounds for years,” said Jakub. “The guy’s a hermit after his classes end. He doesn’t even leave the academy for holidays. I don’t think he’d have bought the artificed gum to put on the letter himself, so I’m wondering if the same guys who tracked it, gave it Henwright in the first place so he could pass it on to me.”

  Witas moved away from the shelves. “It’s worth a try, but we better go see this corpse first.”

  “Here,” said Archibald, holding out the soul necklace. The crack was just a scratch now. The necklace still looked beaten up and wasn’t as flashy as his old one, but it looked like it’d hold essence.

  “Twenty gold,” said Archibald.

  He widened his eyes at the price. He only had 39 gold in his bag; this guy wanted more than half of it for a repair?

  “I thought Witas was your friend? What about friend’s rates?” said Jakub.

  “Those are friend’s rates,” said Archibald.

  Jakub paid him and took the necklace. Now all he needed was to find something newly dead so he could take its soul essence.

  CHAPTER 20

  After Witas and the rude necro left, Archibald had just started working on the wind-up duck again when his shop bell trilled. The sound brought conflicted feelings up in him in a way he never expected a simple bell to be capable of.

  One, happiness that he might have a new customer.

  Two, annoyance that he couldn’t even find the time to finish the work he’d taken on for his existing clients.

  He’d been meaning to hire an assistant for a while, and he had an idea about who to ask. There was a boy who lived in Dispolis, one of the street urchins, except where most of them weren’t worth the air in their lungs, this one was different.

  Without being asked, this boy had taken other orphaned children under his wing, protecting them like a mother bird. The boy deserved something better for a life; he deserved a steady job, and a chance and being legitimate. If not…well, street life didn’t have the highest life expectancy, did it?

  “Archibald,” said the new customer.

  A man walked through the shop, approaching the counter and leaning on it. Although the man was smaller than Archibald, he was still intimidating.

  This was Studs Godwin, a veteran of the Queen’s Eyes, which was a unit of her majesty’s army that dealt with subterfuge and information, and who obtained it in all manner of ways.

  If you believed the rumors, Studs had been part of the inquisitors, but had been discharged when he took their forceful methods of persuasion too far.

  This was a man who you didn’t mess around with. Archibald could never be his usual tetchy self when this guy walked into his shop. It wasn’t just because he knew what Studs and his friends did with the people they abducted; it was that unlike the others two members of the group, Studs got a perverse kick out of it.

  “I’m expecting a shipment of mana in next Thursday,” said Archibald, hoping to get rid of him. “You’ll be better coming back then, if you’re here for the usual.”

  “That’s not why I’m here,” said Studs.

  His voice was incredibly high, enough that he easily carried soprano notes in the Dispolis choir every fourth Saturday, when they had a show playing.

  Yep, most days of the month Studs was a tougher-than-leather punk who committed secret acts of torture for Hackett Lee, his leader. But on rare days, you’d find him in the back row of the Gyre Chapel choir, singing songs about angles, light, and the way of the spirit.

  Archibald knew better than say anything about Studs’ voice, though. He’d seen that once in the Boarhead tavern; Rummy Holgate had gulped down too many ciders, and he’d mocked Studs while they played cards.

  Slamming his cards on the table, Rummy had said in a mocking copy of Studs’ high voice, “Th
at’s my hand! Cough up your pennies, gents.”

  The look Studs gave him turned the tavern into a freezer, practically spreading icicles along the rafters.

  Nothing happened that night except Studs sipping his drink, eyeing Rummy like a demon smelling a virgin soul.

  Nothing happened for a month. Two months.

  “He’s forgotten about it,” said the innkeeper, when Rummy finally dared show his face again. “Just watch your stupid mouth next time you get drunk.”

  And it was still quiet for a third month, then a fourth.

  One night in July, the Greenoakes neighbourhood of Dispolis was woken to a scream. It came from Rummy ’s house, but Rummy, two miles away in the Boarhead tavern, didn’t hear it.

  When guardsmen stormed his house, they found his wife in bed, the sheets splattered with blood.

  The skin on her right hand had been flayed off and left in a nearly-folded pile on her bedside cabinet, along with a note that read, ‘and that’s my hand.’

  Studs spent two days in the guardship cells, before being released without charges. Unlike most people who spent time at her majesty’s leisure, he wasn’t haggard or bruised at the end of his stay. The guards didn’t dare lay a finger on him.

  When asked about it, Studs shrugged and said in his high voice, “I guess I must have friends looking out for me.”

  And that was true, because not one week later, Studs gained temporary employment with the guardship itself. They brought him in to help with some of the silent criminals, men and women whom had no evidence and against them and wouldn’t confess, and they needed Studs to get them to admit what they did.

  That was why even Archie, a man too old to care what people thought, watched his words – and the tone he said them in – around Studs.

  “We need to talk,” said Studs, holding the wind-up duck.

  Archie felt his chest tighten; the noblewoman was coming back for it soon, and pleasing her would mean recommendations to all her snobby friends. Studs had the dexterity of a horse trying to build a house of cards with its hooves, and if he broke the duck…