The Godstone

by Violette Malan

  “Flying fish!” the blond on the right called out. “Pennies a pound for a fish that will fly right into your skillet. Don’t let such a bargain fly away from you, Doms! The best prices on flying fish!”

  Passersby gathered, laughing, some calling the two young men by name. What had probably started out as a game between assistants bored by the lack of business in the closing hour had turned into a source of entertainment and a close-of-the-day attention-getter.

  And gave Elva the opportunity he’d been looking for.

  He maneuvered himself between a tall woman still in her City guard uniform and three men obviously shopping together. He watched for the moment when the gathering audience hid him from his tail and stepped backward between two stalls, turning into the back corridor and watching from the shadows as she walked past. The corridor, never very wide, had been narrowed by piles of boxes, crates, and pallets. He waited just long enough to make sure the woman wasn’t turning around to look for him before he ran toward the loading docks in the rear of the building and out through the bay doors.

  He’d spent more time in the market than he liked. Lamplighters were already adjusting the flames on the oil lamps in the slightly shabby streets behind the market building. The newer gaslights were obviously reserved for the more important areas of the City. He was sorry he’d missed seeing those lit. He’d heard about them in the other world, but they still hadn’t reached the Dundalk Territory when Fenra walked into his office and changed his life.

  Street lighting did make him easier to see, he thought, but it also meant the streets were more crowded. After zigzagging through several lanes and alleys, Elva turned into a secondary street and followed it to the quiet square he’d walked through with Predax. On the far side, a square-built woman with a stepladder stood lighting one of the lamps. A second-class square, then, where the lamps were lit only after those on the main streets. But still respectable.

  And on its way up, he thought as he noted the gas lamp hanging over the door of the inn, already lit. Business must be good.

  As he expected, the front door was still open. Even if these hotels provided meals, and in Elva’s day most did, there were always patrons out for the evening, and it was easier to leave the door open than to have a night attendant. However, here, there was a tall narrow man standing behind a tall narrow desk. For a moment Elva thought it was an Albainil, but then he shook his head. It was only a good copy. A very good copy. No hotel on a street like this one—or very many others for that matter—would have an Albainil in a public lobby.

  The attendant behind the desk took one look at Elva’s clothing and smiled, opening his book. “Welcome to the Hotel Ginglen.”

  “I’m afraid I’m looking for information, not a room.”

  The man’s smile didn’t fade. “If I know, you’ll know.”

  Elva found himself smiling back. “I’m looking for two friends of mine who might be staying here. I’d prefer not to mention names.” He touched the side of his nose. The attendant almost smiled again. Evidently that gesture hadn’t changed its meaning. “One is a man about my height, with darker hair and blue eyes. He may have identified himself as a carpenter.” It seemed that the man’s face stiffened ever so slightly. “The other is a practitioner, a woman, very dark of skin, and curly of hair, with gray eyes.”

  “They’re not clients of ours at this moment,” the man said.

  Which meant they had been, and might be again. “I see. Do you know, does the Autumn Rose Tavern still exist?”

  The man frowned. “Well, it’s still in business,” he said. “But I’m sure it’s listed in the merchants’ association as a chop-house.”

  “Ah, then things have changed a bit since my—my father’s day.”

  “Did you need directions, Dom?”

  “No. No, thank you, I’m sure I remember the way. Well, if you should see my friends, tell them I asked about them, and tell them I also asked about the Autumn Rose.”

  “I will, of course.” The man hesitated. “I would also tell them about the horse.”

  “The horse?”

  “The young, ah, practitioner’s horse. She might be worried about it. If I should see her again, I would of course let her know we’ve been keeping the animal safe.”

  “I’m sure she would appreciate that.” Then Fenra meant to come back. She wouldn’t leave her horse otherwise. Elva felt better than he had in days.

  Elva took the long way around getting back to his barrack, stopping at two coffee houses on his way. He looked, but this time no one was following him. He crossed the East Bridge and entered the gates of the White Court with a nod to the guards.

  “Hey, Karamisk,” one of them called to him. “Better hope you’re sober, Captain’s handing out extra duties.”

  “I’ll just change into uniform—”

  “He’s already asked about you. Change later if there’s time—it’s all pistols primed, as they say. Hey, if you get a chance, come back and tell us what’s going on.”

  Elva waved him off and trotted toward the square outside his barrack. When the guard captain saw him, he beckoned Elva forward.

  “All right, then, you all know the descriptions of the two we’re looking for. Remember, they’re not to be harmed, either of them. Is that clear? Just detain them. Once you have your assignments, get going.”

  As the captain pointed to pairs of guards and gave them their instructions, Elva had an idea. Fenra would need to use the locket, so there’d be one place in particular worth looking.

  “Captain? Maybe I should go to Practitioner Otwyn’s office? They’ll most likely show up there.”

  “I’ve already assigned that post, Karamisk.”

  “Of course, Captain, but they’ll be more cooperative if they see me waiting, especially if I’m not in uniform.”

  “You may have something there. Very well. Are you armed? Fine then, go. Tell Rontin you’re there to assist her.”

  Elva lost no time in saluting and tearing off down the alley. Of course the Captain wouldn’t let him wait alone. The man wasn’t stupid.

  * * *

  Fenra

  I polished the locket on my sleeve. What was the worst that could happen? If Metenari had used the Godstone, and the world as we knew it had completely changed, there was every possibility that Medlyn’s office was no longer there. In which case the locket simply wouldn’t work, and Arlyn and I would be stranded in the vault forever. I looked at the jug and the pie cupboard. Well, we would not starve to death. And who knew? Arlyn Albainil was still the greatest mind in the history of the practice, I told myself, and power or no power he would probably be able to design a forran for a dimensional gate that would work from a vault. We might go to the world where Elva had lived for so long. At least we knew the practice would work there. Without Elva, I thought.

  “I’ll be off, then,” I said again.

  “Good luck.”

  I forced a smile, and nodded, and hoped I would not need it.

  Even before the locket was completely open, I could feel the change in the air around me. Cooler, damper, the scents open and fresh. Medlyn’s vault didn’t feel stuffy until you were out of it. I wondered where the air in the vaults came from. I wondered if Arlyn could tell me. I hoped for the chance to ask him.

  It wasn’t moonlight coming in though the uncurtained window, but lamplight. The new gaslights were evidently bright enough to cast shadows even on the second floor. I shut my eyes for a moment, relieved that the office was still here, the world was still here. Elva was still here. I thought I heard a noise and snapped the locket shut. Was the new practitioner still setting up her office? What could she be doing in the middle of the night? Dusting?

  I tiptoed to where I could stand to one side of the door. Halfway there, a blow to the back of my head knocked me to my knees. Strong fingers wrapped around my left wrist and pulled my
arm up behind my back. There were forrans that didn’t need the practitioner’s hand free, but in that moment I could not think of any. Then a cloth bag smelling of licorice was forced over my head and held tight around my throat by a fist at the back of my neck. I tried to breathe and started coughing as I sucked in a mouthful of licorice-flavored dust.

  Suddenly my arm was free and the grip around my neck loosened. I tore the covering off and took a deep, dust-free breath.

  Elva stood over a guard, holding a gun in his right hand. The guard—a woman in the uniform of the White Court—lay on her side on the floor. Luckily she had fallen on a thick carpet. I crawled over and felt the side of her neck. Her pulse beat firm and strong.

  Elva lifted me to my feet. “Are you all right?”

  Just in time I remembered not to nod. I felt for the tender spot on the back of my head. “You?”

  “Better now.” White teeth gleamed against dark mustaches. “Where’s Arlyn?”

  “Still in Medlyn’s vault.” There was something in Elva’s face that made me add, “He is weak, but he will live.”

  “Metenari—or whoever that is—has the guard out looking for him—for both of you.”

  “What do you mean ‘whoever it is’?” I sat down on the edge of the desk, still rubbing at the back of my head, feeling the pain dissipate.

  “Metenari isn’t acting like himself—”

  “How do you know? You’ve only met the man once . . .” Elva was shaking his head at me.

  “Predax, the younger apprentice, he’s noticed it too. Most of the time Metenari seems just like the man we met before, your self-important schoolmate. Some of the time he’s a much sharper fellow, walks differently, talks differently. Different in a familiar way.”

  “Familiar how?” For some reason I felt cold, and I wrapped my arms around myself.

  “I didn’t know at first, or maybe I didn’t want to know, but familiar like he’s Xandra—no, wait, I know what you’re going to say. It doesn’t feel like Arlyn, like the man with us, it feels like Xandra. Do you think—is there any way that somehow, along with his power, Arlyn might have left some part of himself behind?”

  I swallowed. “Come, you can ask him yourself.”

  To my surprise Elva did not take my hand. “I should stay,” he said. “The White Court is too secure, too full of guards. We need to get Metenari, and the Godstone, out somewhere we can deal with him better. Away from the City entirely.” His brow furrowed. “Xandra used to have a tower, in the Third Mode, I think. Anyhow, I know how to get there and Arlyn will as well. It’s private and it’s secure. If I stay here I can make sure Metenari comes.” He looked down at the guard he had knocked out. “Besides, I can’t leave her like this. I don’t know what they’ll do to her.”

  “Elva.” He looked back at me, his mouth forming just the slightest curve. “There are larger things at stake.”

  Now he did smile. “There are no larger things.” He gripped me by the shoulder. “Tell Arlyn once you’re back here to go to the Autumn Rose—he knows where it is, and he’ll know what to do. I’ll make sure your horse is there—”

  “Terith?”

  “Yes, Terith. Now go, before Rontin wakes up.”

  * * *

  Arlyn

  “I don’t know.” I rubbed my face with my hands, the only response I had to what Elva had said about Metenari. “I suppose it’s possible I left more than my power behind. All I know for certain is that when I finished sealing the stone away, all my power was gone.”

  “Was that the beginning of the lowness?”

  I looked up at her, elbows braced on my knees. “Probably. I don’t remember much of what happened immediately after.”

  “So it’s possible that the Godstone contains some aspect of you, some part of your essence?”

  “Not me, Xandra.”

  Fenra lowered herself into a chair. “Xandra’s knowledge and Metenari’s power?”

  Ideas flashed through my brain. “Not my knowledge, not my forrans.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  I straightened up, taking a deep breath. “Because I still have them. My power’s gone, but my knowledge is still with me.”

  “You hope.” Fenra sat quiet for a few minutes, staring at a spot on the floor. Finally she nodded and stood up. “It doesn’t change what we have to do. Let us try it before my nerve wears off.”

  “I don’t think that’s possible.” I’d hoped to make her smile. It didn’t work.

  We gripped each other’s wrists, my left with her right. The locket was already in her practitioner’s hand and she placed it for a moment on her forehead. Then, as she’d done before, she breathed on it. As I’d suggested, she turned it upside down and, using the nail on her index finger, she popped it open, face down, as if she was about to shake something out of it.

  Fog drifted out until we were completely surrounded. At first I could see nothing, and then shapes began to form, slowly, as though they were coming closer. I thought I could see furniture, a table, but everything was suddenly blown away by a powerful wind that flapped our clothes around us and sucked the breath from our mouths. And we were on a beach, clean white sand, deep turquoise ocean, clear pewter sky.

  “This is where I find you when you are low,” Fenra said. “Why would Medlyn’s locket bring us here? I never thought it was an actual place.”

  Even though the sun was shining, I felt cold. Regardless of what Fenra said, I didn’t remember ever being here before, and yet I knew the place. And Fenra knew the place, but Medlyn most likely hadn’t. “It can’t be the locket,” I said. “It’s something in this place, something that diverted us once we were moving—or more likely diverted you.” My heart pounded and I licked sweat off my upper lip. How could I be sweating when I felt so cold? “It can’t mean anything good. Get us out of here. Fast.”

  I could see Fenra had questions, but she knew when to do as she was told. I didn’t see exactly what she did with the locket this time, but the next thing I knew, we were standing in a sitting room, darkened by drawn shades. All the furniture was covered with dust sheets. Enough light entered around the edges of the shades to tell me that it must be midafternoon on a sunny day.

  “It appears Practitioner Otwyn did not take over Medlyn’s living space when she moved into his office.” Fenra spoke quietly, and her words seemed to hang like dust motes in the stale air.

  “Even if she had . . .” I went over to the right-hand window and pulled back the edge of the shade. Medlyn’s rooms looked out over the sunny end of the Watchmaker’s Gardens. “She’d likely be out at this time of day anyway.”

  “But her servants would not.”

  I let my hand drop. I’d forgotten about servants.

  “The good thing about the midafternoon,” Fenra said as I followed her to the door and into the hallway, “is that it’s the busiest time in the more public areas of the Court . . .”

  Her voice died away, as we walked down the stairs across the arcade and into the garden. She was right, there were other people in here, but only about a dozen, and all of them practitioners or apprentices. In case any of them glanced our way, I smiled and nodded as if Fenra had said something witty. About halfway down the long central path to the south exit, I noticed she wasn’t limping.

  “My limp is sure to be part of my description,” she said when I asked her. “When I do not limp, no one sees me. They will not think of me at all. It is a small, subtle change, but all the more persuasive because of that.”

  “Also, you’re not dressed like a practitioner.”

  She squeezed my arm. “Also that.” She slowed down, tugging me ever so slightly to one side. I was about to ask her what was wrong, when I saw for myself. Two men in guard tunics entered the garden by the exit we were heading for. It was too late for us to think of turning into another path. Fenra stopped and picked
a yellow flower from a nearby bush, turning it over in her hands, softly breathing in its scent.

  “Your business here?” The taller guard stopped in front of us while the other, shorter one kept a step back to get a better angle on us if he had to use the pistol he now had in his hand.

  “Oh, we had to come!” I’d never heard that voice from Fenra, and any other time I would have been vastly entertained by her spot-on imitation of Jonsel Weaver. The accent alone was atrocious, and said better than anything else could have that we were from one of the far outer Modes. So we couldn’t possibly be the people they were looking for. “Everyone said, ‘If you’re going to the City, you’ve got to visit the White Court—why, they have the best gardens in the world!’ And they were right! I mean, look around you—” Fenra waved the flower through the space between us. “But you’re probably so used to it you hardly notice anymore.”

  “The White Court isn’t open to the public today,” the tall one said. His frown had faded.

  “Oh.” Fenra did a marvelous job of looking dumbfounded. “But no one stopped us coming in,” she added. “No one said anything to us.”

  “You’ll have to come with us.” The tall one gestured toward the exit they’d come out of.

  “But why? We didn’t know . . .” I swear Fenra looked as though she was about to start crying.

  “Not to worry, Dom, we’re just escorting you out of the Court.”

  “Oh, thank you so much. That’s very kind.”

  * * *

  Fenra

  “The Autumn Rose is a tavern on the upper west side, across the river.” Arlyn took me by the elbow and steered me across the bridge.

  “And what is so special about it?” I asked him.

  “It’s built over the old cisterns of the City, and there’s a way to get outside without using the Road.” He glanced at me. “Stop playing with your locket. It’s not going to talk to you, and we don’t want to end up somewhere else by accident.”