Dormael made his way down clogged thoroughfares, and curving avenues. He took shortcuts through alleyways full of dirty, mischievous-looking children that melted into the surroundings at the sight of him, like minnows under rocks. His hands hovered near his knives. Most criminals could smell wizards, though, and avoided them like the plague. Dormael didn’t know how they could tell, but wizards were ignored by the types of street toughs who accosted people—at least in Ishamael.
The rain began in earnest as Dormael reached his destination. He hurried out of the rain, and ducked into a squat, three-story building sandwiched between two others much like it. There were six windows facing the street, three of them decorated with sighing women staring at the rain. Today was a working day in Ishamael, which meant that the place would be practically empty.
Dormael was fine with that.
The Headless Dancer was a combination brothel, taproom, and inn. In one place the errant traveler could find all the services he needed after a long journey—a cool drink, a soft bed, and a soft body for warmth. It was an infamous place, and the girls had a reputation for being rowdy. The Headless Dancer’s parties were almost as sophisticated as theater productions, but the parties never got started until sundown. Under the rain on an overcast working day, it was subdued.
Dormael passed his heavy cloak to a serving man at the door, and limped over to sit at the bar. The interior of the Headless Dancer was covered with velvet, cushions, and lace. Vast swaths of fabric hung from everywhere, filling the room with red, purple, and gray. Smoke hung heavy in the air, creating a pleasant haze that dulled Dormael’s wits as he breathed it in. He knew from experience that the owner of the place burned a narcotic in the incense, creating a relaxed atmosphere that dulled the inhibitions of his proprietors. It was, Dormael imagined, good for business.
The bar was empty except for two men sharing a long-stemmed pipe, and four girls in various states of dress—or undress, depending on how one viewed it. The barmaid, a woman with lustrous black hair over pale skin, sauntered over to him as he sat.
“What’s your poison?” she asked, giving him a hooded smile.
“Firewine. It’s a good day for that, I think,” Dormael said, situating himself at the bar.
“Aye, it’s always a good day for that, if you’re asking me. You look like you’ve been trampled by a team of horses. What kind of rough business got you so mishandled?”
Her hands stayed busy while she spoke, pouring him a drink with practiced ease.
“Nothing good,” Dormael said, tipping his cup in her direction. He took a sip, then offered the cup to the barmaid. “Care to join me?”
“It’s not as though I have anything else to do.” She smiled, all rounded features and bottomless eyes.
“Then pull that bottle up here and let’s get started.”
***
D’Jenn sat with his legs crossed, his body relaxed, and his mind as quiet as he could make it.
It was nigh impossible since the meeting with Victus. Something about all the information he had absorbed tickled at his mind, hinted at a pattern he was not seeing. Victus had said it himself during their conversation.
They’re not trained to see the patterns, he’d said, they don’t recognize the knife in the dark.
Those words tumbled over and over in D’Jenn’s mind. Victus had been lying during the meeting—or, at least, he had been hiding something. Body language couldn’t reveal a lie, but one could deduce when a subject was distressed over their words. Victus had clearly been distressed, though for what reason, D’Jenn had yet to understand.
Vera’s note sat in a nearby cabinet, weighing on his mind. His sorrow at her death was coloring everything. Dormael had escaped, probably to mourn in his own way, and that left D’Jenn to brood on his own. Maybe his emotions were the reason nothing seemed right to him, maybe that’s why he felt so suspicious of everything. Perhaps it was simple melancholy.
The urge to read her letter was a terrible thing.
He calmed his stormy thoughts and sank into a deeper state, where his emotions were nothing but a whisper at the edge of his consciousness. His magic was roiling at the center of his being, but he let it sleep for now. At the present moment, it was his mind that he needed, not his magic.
D’Jenn thought of all the players at the table. The Galanian Emperor, whose motivations, other than power for power’s sake, could not be deduced with what D’Jenn knew of him. He was an incomplete picture, a puzzle with missing pieces. He might be able to tell what some of the man’s motivations had been in some situations, but divining his entire strategy from those disparate events was nigh impossible. Until he could get a fuller picture of the man, he could not make any effective predictions about his intentions, except to continue pursuing the armlet. If Victus’s theory was correct, then the armlet was only the beginning.
The Mekai’s motivations were clear enough. D’Jenn had sensed something from him in the War Room during the meeting…mistrust? Anxiety? He’d never seen the man speak with the slightest amount of anger. On the subject of the Galanian persecution of Sevenlanders, though, he had loosened his emotional control. The controversy over the rumor was simmering throughout the Conclave—though every time D’Jenn heard the story from a new set of lips, it became more gruesome and villainous. The Mekai saw himself as the protector of the Conclave’s laws, and the conventions established by hundreds of years of tradition. His motivations were sincere, and predictable.
It was Victus that D’Jenn couldn’t reconcile. He knew the man, trusted the man, yet there was something that kept bringing the problem back around in D’Jenn’s mind. He had lied—but why? The Deacon of the Warlocks was one of the most powerful and dangerous men in all of Eldath. What did he have to hide? Why lie to the Mekai, to Dormael and D’Jenn—Hells, why lie at all?
Why is he so invested in the idea of an offensive against the Galanian Empire? What would such a thing gain him? What would it gain the Conclave?
D’Jenn agreed that keeping the armlets safe from Dargorin was paramount, and defeating this vilth—whether he worked with the emperor or not—was just as important. But risking an offensive involving Warlocks against the Galanian Empire would be a declaration of war. If such an operation were found out—or even worse, defeated and captured—it would mean the descent of all the world into chaos. Other Alderakian kingdoms, when it was discovered that the Conclave had attacked the Galanians, would rally around them as the victims of an unprovoked magical aggression.
And they would be the victims of a magical aggression, D’Jenn realized. Provoked or not, such a thing is forbidden.
All over Eldath, swords would be polished for war. Victus would have known that, though, which made his actions all the more confusing. The man who had taught D’Jenn to see these patterns, predict these outcomes, would have come to the same conclusions. Why, then, did he advocate for this dangerous path?
There must be a reason.
Uncle Saul had mentioned something strange during their idle discussions back at Harlun homestead. The man was ever into conspiracy talk, but he wasn’t as bumbling as Dormael pretended. He’d had some wild theory about the son of Nyra Jurillic, and the creation of a large fund for the Council of Seven through tax revenue. D’Jenn had paid only passing attention at the time, but now the conversation hovered around the edges of his pattern, begging to find a place. He tried to smooth away his concerns, and thought back to what the old man had said.
Kitamin Jurillic.
The name bubbled to the surface of his mind.
Kitamin Jurillic was the son of Nyra Jurillic, Kansil of the Tasha-Mal. Kitamin had been captured in a Rashardian raid, and carted away in a slave caravan. If D’Jenn remembered correctly, the old man had linked Kitamin’s reappearance to the vote that Nyra had proposed after his return. At the time, D’Jenn had dismissed the story as fanciful.
Now that D’Jenn had time to consider, the old man might have been on to something. Jurillic’s vote to cre
ate the fund made no sense. Even stranger was the fact that the Soirus-Gamerit Kansil, Nilliam Berrul, had voted in favor of the tax hike in direct opposition to his clan leaders—a move that could see him deposed by the same.
Kitamin Jurillic had been a renowned warrior. He had fought in the Gladiator’s Ring, and had been at war with the Rashardian raiders his entire life. Even for a man of his strength, it was unlikely he could escape from a Rashardian slaver’s caravan unless he did so before they crossed the border into the desert. The Golden Waste was an ocean of sand that covered almost half of Rashardia—a deadly landscape by any measure. If one didn’t know how to navigate it, one was doomed to die under the sun.
Kitamin, however, had returned a year later, missing his hands. D’Jenn had many advantages Kitamin did not, and even he would have trouble escaping from a slaver’s caravan if they took him into the Golden Waste. For a hand-less Kitamin, the task would have been impossible. The man couldn’t even hold a waterskin, much less any sort of weapon.
Who, then, could affect such a rescue, and pressure Jurillic into a vote at the next Council meeting? It would take a vast amount of resources, and skilled rescuers. Fighting men could fall right and left in an operation like that, but Warlocks were trained and experienced in such missions.
Why the fund, though? Why set up an extra trove of money for the Council? D’Jenn started to see some of the pieces come together. He tried to think as if he were in Victus’s place.
Here I am, he thought, decades old in my duty, and simmering at all the injustice I see. I’m the leader of a dangerous faction of wizards, and in a position to do a lot of dangerous, expensive favors. I want influence in order to secure the vote for Mekai, and I need political unrest in order to muddy the waters, and open the door for my ascension.
But why the fund?
Nyra Jurillic would be in the city, as the Council of Seven wrestled with the issue of the Galanians. She was the one person who could confirm for him whether his suspicions about Victus were true. He couldn’t go and request an audience, though—it would leave a trail, and Victus would learn of it. Getting to Jurillic would require finesse.
D’Jenn rose from the floor, grabbed his cloak, and headed out the door.
***
“They do exist, I can promise you that,” Dormael said. “There’s a vast swath of the Stormy Sea full of the things, and they’ll suck a ship right down to the bottom. Just look on a map. It’s called the Maelstrom Field.”
The barmaid smiled. “Come now, that can’t be true. You’re just trying to impress me with all the big, amazing things you’ve seen. Your sort are always coming in here, trying to convince me that they’re all handsome adventurers.”
“I don’t have to convince you of anything—I’m a handsome adventurer no matter what some beautiful woman thinks about it,” Dormael said, taking another pull from the firewine. It burned on the way down, and left a sweet taste in his mouth. The bottle was almost halfway gone, and most of it into Dormael’s cup. His aches and pains were beginning to fade into the background, and his vision was taking on a comfortable, hazy quality.
“So I’m a beautiful woman, am I?”
“Do you need a handsome adventurer to tell you so?”
“It’s nice to hear,” she laughed. “Are you going to finish that entire bottle?”
“I could be persuaded to share with a beautiful woman, especially in a more intimate setting.”
“Such as one of the upstairs rooms?” she asked.
“If you prefer one of those rooms, that’s fine by me. It does sound convenient.” Dormael gave her a sideways wink as he took another pull from the bottle.
The barmaid let out a peal of silvery laughter.
“No, honey. I’m not for sale.”
“Who said I was offering to pay?”
She slapped him on the shoulder, and gave him a kiss on the cheek as she rose from her seat. She moved down the bar to serve the other two patrons, leaving Dormael alone with his bottle. More customers trickled into the taproom, showing Dormael quick glances of the rainy afternoon. The smell of the incense was pleasant, and the drink had relaxed him.
He turned from the bar and shambled over to a velvet couch, covered in garish bolts of purple and crimson. The colors were jarring to the eye, but the half-dressed women lounging around the taproom were a much more pleasant sight. He smiled at them, but indicated with his expression that he didn’t want to be bothered. As much as he enjoyed flirting, when he thought of buying a whore for the evening, Shawna’s voice popped into his mind.
I see, she would say. That’s exactly what I would have expected.
His thoughts were full of the memory of her skin, and the taste of her. She had been silent on the whole thing, and Dormael dared not press her to remember. There were times that he found himself searching her eyes for any recognition, any acknowledgment, any hint that the fire she had shown him was lurking beneath the surface. The woman, as always, was inscrutable.
Probably wants nothing to do with an idiot like you. She said it herself—you’re terrible.
Dormael’s eyes went to the door as it opened to the rain outside, and he almost choked on his drink.
A woman stood outlined by the rain, squinting around the darkened taproom. She was diminutive, and pretty in a way that kept a man wondering what it was that made her outshine buxom beauties of half again her height. She had amber colored eyes that gave her face a fey quality, and soft, enchanting features. She was wrapped in a large Sevenlander cloak, which looked out of place on her small frame, especially since she had the hood drawn all the way up to cover her hair. Dormael knew that she would have a wealth of raven locks concealed within that hood. As their eyes met, Dormael felt pinned to the spot.
He’d thought she was dead.
“Inera?”
The word escaped before he knew he’d spoken. She looked to him, and for a moment, Dormael thought he was hallucinating. Maybe his magic was destroying his mind after all. Maybe Lacelle had been right about him.
Her eyes conveyed a thousand emotions in a few fleeting seconds. Longing, regret, anger, shame, and confusion all shot through her eyes like lightning. When the moment was over, her expression settled into something unreadable. As he sat with his mouth agape, she rushed back into the rain, slamming the door in her wake. His heart dropped into his stomach.
“Inera, wait!” Dormael shouted, scrambling up from his seat.
Heedless of the rain, he rushed after her.
***
D’Jenn moved through the city like a ghost.
He didn’t need to use his magic to blend in, he only needed ingenuity. Nondescript clothing, a bit of dirt on the face, a dejected, uninterested expression, and the deed was done—he was nothing but an everyday laborer. He flowed with the river of people through the streets of Ishamael, making his way to the official holdings of the Tasha-Mal. The pace of the crowd was slow for his taste, but he endured it with patience.
For all he knew, Victus may be having him watched.
The holdings of the Tasha-Mal were on the far end of the West Market, alongside the holdings of the other Sevenlander tribes. Mals were less plentiful in Ishamael than in Mistfall, where the trade was more profitable. D’Jenn spotted a few here and there, marked out by their tattoos, wild hair, and menacing appearance against the backdrop of farmers, craftsmen, and artisans from other tribes. The Mals were a fierce lot.
He made the holdings by early afternoon, and ducked into an alleyway across the street from edge of the district. He waited for some time, watching the passersby and waiting for anyone following to make the mistake of appearing. They did not.
D’Jenn slipped out of the alley and joined a smaller throng of people entering the Mal district. There were a few shops and traders scattered inside—mostly for weapons and religious curios, which the Mals favored for charms—but the majority of the district was given over to house the tribal leadership and its retinue. As the kansil was in attendance, ther
e were more than a few Mal warriors walking the streets, conversing with each other in boisterous tones. D’Jenn avoided these as much as possible, and made his way to the offices of the kansil.
The building was a large one, though unadorned in comparison with many others in Ishamael. It was two stories high, encircled by a low stone wall, and plastered over in white. There was no gate, however, only two guards standing by the entrance to the compound. The Mals didn’t live in buildings back home, and they found the walls more than a little oppressive. A large fire burned within the walled courtyard, and D’Jenn could hear muddled conversation and laughter issuing from around it. He decided to move around to the back side of the compound.
It was more difficult than he had anticipated to sneak through the district of the Mals. While they were not big on subterfuge, the Mal warriors were always alert, and ready to fight. They lived in a constant state of warfare with the Rashardians, and that made them more than a little jumpy. D’Jenn could handle them if a problem arose, but the last thing he wanted to do was attack one of his own countrymen, or answer any questions about what he was doing there. He came close to being seen a time or two, but finally made his way around to the rear of the building.
He waited for a few minutes to see if any guards were going to walk by. When they did not, he checked to see if anyone was looking, and slipped over the edge of the wall. His feet hit the grass on the other side without a sound, and he rushed to the wall of the building.
D’Jenn opened his Kai, and wove a spell into his clothing—a simple suggestion to look elsewhere. He would remain visible, so the spell was dangerous, but it should serve his purposes for getting inside. Splitting his consciousness, he used the climbing spell he’d taught Dormael in Ferolan, and started scaling the wall.
The entire time he was stuck to the side of the building, he felt as if a cry would raise at any moment. Perhaps some maid would be looking out her window from across the way, see him climbing like a spider along the wall, and scream. Perhaps one of the Mals would come around the building and start chucking pointy things in his direction.
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