by Deck Davis
Archie couldn’t say anything though. Instead, he left the counter. “I take it this is a door locked, blinds closed conversation?” he said.
“Do we have any other type?”
Archibald closed the blinds and turned the key in the lock.
“I heard that you had a visitor,” said Studs.
“This is a shop; I have many. Which one do you mean?”
“You know which one, damn it. An outcast from the academy.”
Archibald nodded. “He came in with the Black Cleric.”
“He’s making friends already. Hmm. What did they want?”
“The boy needed his soul necklace fixing. It had a crack across the face of it, so he needed it artificed.”
“And did you?”
“Of course not. I sealed the crack so that it’ll hold essence, but I didn’t seal it completely. Over time the essence will drain. It was a hard balance; fixing it to keep him off guard, but making sure he doesn’t have full access to his necromancy.”
“Very good, artificer. You’ve proven to be useful in your own doddering way. Did they speak of their plans?”
“Only that the guardship called the cleric in to use his Blacktyde hoodoo on a corpse, and he needed a necro to help. They’re headed there now.”
Studs walked toward the door. It always played out this way; when he got what he wanted, he left without a goodbye. So rude.
“Oh, there was something else,” said Archibald.
Studs spun around. “Yes?”
“They’re going into the Rats’ Palace afterwards. They’re onto you, in a way. It was you who gave him the letter, wasn’t it? The artificed one?”
“Be careful what you ask me, artificer. You don’t want to swim into waters too deep for you.”
Studs unlocked the door and slipped out into the streets, and Archibald soon lost sight of him in the crowd.
He picked up the wind-up duck and his tinker screwdriver and set to work, quickly losing himself in it.
CHAPTER 21
The guardship headquarters was supposed to set an example to the people. Placed in the geographical center of Dispolis, it was the tallest building in the city, and by far the best maintained.
Queen Patience’s coffers might have been running low, but when she had first come to power aged 24, she had given her advisors an order.
“If the people see the guardship building in an ill-state, they will think ill about the guards themselves. Fix it up, make it stand prouder than a sailor who has just fucked a whore.”
So the story went, anyway. Jakub could believe parts of it; he liked to believe that the Queen had come up with the idea of making the guardship building look good, but he didn’t believe she had such a filthy mouth.
“This way,” said a guard.
The guard escorting them through the headquarters was tall man and he wore the standard guardship steel chestplate and helmet, but once he’d gotten inside the building, he held his helmet against his side.
As Jakub and Witas followed him through the corridors and toward the morgue, they drew a number of sour stares from men and women in similar armor.
“Get used to it,” said Witas. “They’re always like this. Anyone who wanders through the station with a glyphline tattoo and who isn’t part of the academy gets this kind of treatment.”
“They don’t know that we’re here to help?”
“They’re like a rich guy with a wife half his age - jealous and distrustful. They want what we have, but the idea scares them, too. It’s a fact of life that people without magic might grow up around it, they might tolerate it, but they’ll never be comfortable with it. That’s why bastards like Bendeldrick can publish books filled with hateful horseshit, and still find themselves with followers.”
“Surely the guards haven’t read Bendeldrick’s book?”
“You’d be surprised.”
“Through here, lads,” said the guard. “Watch your step; it’s slippery at the bottom. One of the bodies we brought in earlier was leaking.”
“Leaking? Gods, man, don’t you lot clean up?” said Witas.
While Witas seemed disturbed by a drippy corpse, Jakub wouldn’t have paid it any attention if it were just him. Death was rarely clean; even the most peaceful, pass-away-in-your-sleep deaths came with their messes and stains.
“Just hold the handrail, that’s all,” said the guard.
The air turned colder as they walked down the steps and into the basement beneath the headquarters.
The queen’s coffers hadn’t extended to decorating down there, it seemed. The stone walls were painted white, but judging by the parts that had chipped or crumbled away, it’d been a while since anyone had cared for them.
A chill pervaded in the room, one that seemed to latch onto any uncovered skin like a leech. Jakub felt it slither on his neck, so he buttoned his overcoat and flicked his collar up, covering himself.
“Poor bastard,” said Witas, crossing into the center of the room.
The pickpocket had been laid out on a metal gurney. He was in two parts, pulverised at the waist from where the train had thundered over him.
“Makes me sick,” said Witas. “This is what it comes down to? A kid, laying there like this?”
“You okay?”
“I never get used to it. Not like you necros. How do you stay so calm?”
“The academy makes us take de-sen-”
“De-sensitization classes. Yep, Ian used to tell me. Let’s get to it. You’re up first.”
Jakub took his soul necklace out. On the way to the guardship headquarters, they’d stopped by the riverbank, visiting a wooden dock where half a dozen fisherman sat with their lines cast into the water.
When the fisherman caught something, they bashed its head on the dockside and tossed each one onto an ever-growing pile, while announcing the type of each one.
“Pike!”
“Trout!”
“Halibut!”
A kid, scrawny and covered in fish guts, would collect each one and put it in a separate pile according to species.
Jakub had drained soul essence from the fish. He didn’t get much essence from the pike and trout, but he’d got enough to fill his necklace halfway.
The weird thing was, his necklace wasn’t half-full here in the basement. He hadn’t cast any spells, yet some of the blue light had drained away. Only a sliver, but it was still strange.
“I thought you said Archibald was the best artificer in town?” he said.
“Never said he was the best, just that he gives me friend’s-rates, and he knows when to keep his mouth shut. What’s wrong?”
“Something’s up with my necklace. It’s not holding the essence properly.”
“You need to go get some more?”
“No, I should have enough for Last Rites.”
“Come on then; we can find out how this kid died and then collect our pay.”
This was just a job for Witas, but Jakub felt a sense of urgency, maybe even dread. This kid, spread out in two halves on the gurney, was supposed to be him.
Henwright had given Jakub the letter, and he was becoming surer that he’d sent him into a trap.
But whoever had killed this kid hadn’t banked on a necromancer being able to see what they did. Jakub was going to find out, he was going to look at their face and burn it into his memory, and then he’d hunt the bastard down.
“Ready?” said Witas.
Jakub nodded. “Enjoy,” he said.
He touched the Resurrection glyphline tattoo on his wrist and then spoke the spellword of Last Rites.
A rectangle of light formed beside the gurney. Colors streamed into it, hazy at first but then forming into something solid until they were seeing the pickpocket’s last few minutes. Right beside that, a haze of text floated in the air.
*Necromancy EXP Gained!*
[IIIIIIIIIII ]
CHAPTER 22
The first thing Jakub saw when he watched the last few minutes
of boy’s life was a room. The walls were like the basement of the guardship headquarters; crumbled, dirty, ready to fall down. It was only a row of windows along the top of the wall that gave away the fact that this was somewhere different.
The panes were dirty, but Jakub could see an alleyway just beyond. There was something glowing, maybe a lamp in the window of the building opposite.
“Recognize the alleyway?” said Jakub.
Witas sucked in his cheeks. “Nope. Could be anywhere in Dispolis.”
A person stepped into view. It was a tall figure, wearing grey robes and with a mask over their face. The mask was ceramic with darkened eyes and red cheeks, the kind rich people wore to costume parties.
“Hello,” said the figure.
It was a man, and his accent placed him from Dispolis, but that was all Jakub could garner.
The man kneeled so he was at eye-level with the boy and so was, in effect, looking straight at Jakub. It was as though he knew that Jakub would be watching this.
“I know you can see me now,” said the man. “Last Rites will give you, what, two minutes of this boy’s life? Three? Of course, you’ll only see the end. No doubt you thought you would see something else, didn’t you? That you’d see me kill him, maybe catch a glimpse of my face while the boy breathed his last breaths. We aren’t so careless, novice.”
The man stood up and moved out of eyeshot now. Sounds came from the right side of the room. The boy tried to move his head, but the view only wavered a centimetre.
“They must have bound his head,” said Witas.
The man moved back into view, this time with a suitcase. He opened it to show a neatly-arranged row of coins, each a different color and shape. He picked one up and displayed it.
“I thought you might enjoy my collection. This is a Spenforth; I found it from a trader in the Gospell Isles. It’s quite rare, in that…”
And that was it. For the next 90 seconds, the man displayed his coins, giving the backstory for each; where he got them, who from, how much they were worth.
“It’s almost time,” said a woman, out of eyeshot.
The man put a coin back in his briefcase. “Three minutes?”
“Almost.”
“Then kill him.”
A knife appeared in view, right by the kid’s face. Jakub had just enough time to see the steel glint before it was stabbed toward the boy, and the Last Rites image disappeared.
CHAPTER 23
“What the hell did I just see?” said Witas.
“Last Rites shows what a person sees in their last few minutes of their life. Mine didn’t used to come with sound, until I levelled it up.”
“I know what Last Rites is, Jakub. I’ve dealt with enough necros in my time. When Ian earned it, he used to bring dead mice and stuff home and show me how they copped it. That’s not what I’m asking.”
“He knew that they’d bring in a necromancer,” said Jakub. “We’re not dealing with a bunch of idiots; they were expecting to find me with the letter. When they didn’t, they decided to send a message.”
“What’s so special about you?”
Jakub paced around the room, his pulse pounding. “None of this was random; Henwright set me up, and there’s a reason these guys wanted to find me and not just some random pickpocket. The questions are why did they want me, and why did Henwright do this?”
“There’s a lot of whys,” said Witas. “We need to go to the academy. They’ll string Henwright up by his balls.”
“He’s one of the oldest members of the faculty. He served as a necromancer in King Holren’s army, before Queen Patience got the throne. Whereas me, I’m just a novice who got expelled for fucking up his first assignment. They’re not going to believe me.”
“It won’t just be you.”
“And you…you’re…what? A black cleric? What does that even mean? You’re not part of the church anymore; that’s clear.”
“It’s a long story.”
“All the same, turning up with you isn’t gonna boost my credibility. All we’ll do is show our hand; we’d be letting Henwright know we’re onto him.”
“You call this being onto him?” said Witas. “Listen, we’ll go to the academy, talk to Ian…”
“And is instructor Irvine gonna believe you? Things don’t sound great between you two.”
“He trusted me enough to send you to me.”
“Do you think he’s onto Henwright too?” said Jakub.
“Ian doesn’t know the meaning of subtlety. Whatever thoughts are in his head, he says them. Don’t keep things bottled up, that’s what he always says. If he thought one of his colleagues was up to something, he’d get up off his arse.”
Jakub wanted something; a clue, a sign from the gods, hell, even a sign from the underworld. Anything to get rid of the dread riding in his chest.
It was the idea that people he didn’t know, people capable of murder, wanted him for something. It was the idea that he had nothing; no names, not even a face he could describe. No motive, no reason…just a damn mask wearing coin collector who knew enough about necromancy to set up this little message.
But a new feeling rose up, one that was hot and that thudded in his mind. Mason D’Angelt had told him that a bunch of robed guys had tried to abduct Abbie, and when they failed, they had blasted her in the face with an acid spell.
It couldn’t be a coincidence, surely, that mysterious robed bastards had tried to abduct Abbie, and then had tried to get him, too?
“Whoever these guys are, they’re going after academy students,” said Jakub.
“We don’t know that. They might just have it out for you. Have you pissed anyone off lately? Wait – stupid question.”
“No, they tried to take someone else from the academy too.”
He explained about what had happened to Abbie, starting from seeing Mason carry her corpse up the Path of Returning, to what the master warlock had told him after Jakub helped him kill the summoner.
“If the robed guys are pointing their tiny, shrivelled, wands at academy students, then the instructors are gonna want to listen,” said Witas. “That seals it. We go and speak to Ian first, and then he can get the other instructors to listen.”
“If we go there with a wild story and nothing else, Irvine can’t do a damn thing. Henwright is the head of necromancy now that Kortho retired, and I told you; he’s so respected that when he talks in his sleep, he’s got people scribbling down in their notepads and thinking it’s gold. We need evidence.”
Witas pointed at the pickpocket. “We’ve got proof here. Both pieces of him.”
“A dead pickpocket? What’s that going to prove?”
“Ian will be able to cast the same spell as you. He’ll see the little show they set up for you.”
“And the guardship are just going to let us carry a corpse out of here? I’ll grab his legs and you can hold his top half, and we’ll just walk out of the door? Not a chance. Besides, even if we took him to the academy, his essence will have left him, and his corpse will be useless. And if we tell Irvine to come here, assuming he’d even agree, it’d still be too late.”
“His corpse will be useless? Gods, you necros are something else. Talking about the boy like he’s a slab of beef that’s gonna spoil. You’re sounding more and more like Ian every minute.”
“It’s the de-”
“Yeah, the ‘let’s turn your heart to stone’ training. Got it.”
“We need proof, Witas, and I need to know who’s coming for me. That starts by putting a name to the robe bastard’s face.”
“The robed bastard who’s face we didn’t see.”
“Well, I’ll settle for a name. Let’s go to the Rats’ Palace and find whoever makes the artificer gum. They might keep a record of who they sell it to, or at least they might be able to tell us something. I just need a shred of something solid so we can get the academy to listen.”
“And here I was, thinking this would be a chance to earn a little coin
, and I’d be in the Boarhead by noon. Fine, Jakub, we’ll take a trip to the Rat’s Palace. But first, it’s time for you to see what a Black Cleric can do.”
CHAPTER 24
“Go stand by the steps and make sure nobody comes down,” said Witas. “The guards won’t be happy if they see this.”
“Didn’t they bring you in so you could use your cleric stuff?”
“They think magic is just a lot of fancy words and finger pointing. If they see what it really involves, they lose their heads. C’mon, Jakub, you must know what a non-glyph thinks real magic is. They can’t handle the reality.”
“Well, we’re clear for now.”
While listening out for sounds coming from the top of the stairs, Jakub watched Witas work.
The cleric walked toward the gurney, standing above the severed boy. He reached out to his body, then stopped.
He turned away, paced a few steps while breathing deeply and mumbling under his breath.
“You okay?” said Jakub.
“I’m not like you and Ian; I never got used to this stuff. Just takes me a few seconds to work myself up to it. Listen; whatever you see or hear in the next few minutes, don’t say anything. Got it?”
“Hurry up. We’ve been down here a while already; they’re gonna check on us.”
Witas breathed in and approached the boy again. “Come on. Here I go. Sorry about this, kid. A person deserves better.”
He grabbed one of the boys fingers and then snapped it clean off. The crunch caught Jakub by surprise and sent a shudder through him.
“Have you lost your mind?”
“Yeah…that happened a while ago. Shut up a minute.”
Holding the finger in one hand, he took a rounded disc from his pocket and gripped it in the other.
Jakub knew what it was; every discipline of magic, through all their differences, had something in common – they all needed an item to use as a focal point for their magic.
For him it was his soul necklace where he stored his essence, while Mason D’Angelt had the broach that fastened his cape.
Witas’s focal point was this disc; an oval stone with a pattern of scratches on it.