Goldenfire

by A. F. E. Smith

  ‘Is it real?’ he whispered.

  ‘Yes.’ She handed him the pretty thing, watching as he touched the filaments of ice with a careful finger. ‘When you’re old enough, you’ll be able to do it too.’ I hope, she didn’t add. Because who knew what Marlon might become? He might take the form of a pure Changer creature. He might be a hybrid. He might not Change at all. Or he might be like his father, possessed by a dark and lethal creature that took over his conscious mind without leaving a trace of memory behind …

  Sudden grief rose to catch in Ayla’s throat. She swallowed, squeezing her eyes shut for an instant to force it back, then managed a smile. ‘You stay out here and play, Marlon. I have work to do.’

  He looked disappointed, but nodded obediently enough. No doubt he was used to her fleeting appearances in his life. Evading the nursemaid’s gaze – for either reproach or compassion would have undone her – Ayla turned and hurried away across the square.

  Dear Sirs –

  You will be glad to learn that I can see what I have to do, now. And indeed, I will have to do it fast, because I betrayed myself in today’s lesson. I revealed what I knew. They were already watching me with suspicion, because of the way I look, so now that I have shown my hand … the best thing I can do is act.

  Still, it doesn’t matter that recent events have precipitated this action, because everything is ready. I have the pistol. I have the way in. Now all I have to do is put my gun between Ayla Nightshade’s eyes and pull the trigger.

  Expect to hear word of my success very soon.

  Respectfully yours.

  Kai looked down into the keyless box that was usually kept under the bed. Perfect. Absolutely perfect. Every single item would make its contribution. And when the inflammatory weapons inside the box exploded into the light, the long-awaited death of a monster would be one step closer to becoming reality.

  Kai read over the papers one final time, before slipping them back into place. The pistol itself followed. Bryan’s little game with the firearms had been informative, but the conversation that had taken place between himself and Captain Caraway afterwards had been even more so.

  Saydi made a good point, Bryan had said after the recruits left the training hall – looking all around him uneasily, but not moving close enough to the open window to spot Kai standing beside the wall. Our assassin needs to get hold of a weapon from somewhere. I thought if you visited some of the usual suspects –

  Yes, Caraway had agreed. If any of them have sold anything to … anyone we know, that answers the question. And if not, I can cut them a deal for notifying me of anything that happens in the future. He’d clapped Bryan on the back and made for the door. I’ll go tomorrow.

  At that point Kai had slipped away, gripped by a fierce excitement that made it hard to walk casually. They were going to the gun sellers. And that being the case, the time had come to set the first phase of the plan in motion.

  The time had come to make use of the pistol in the box.

  With a smile, Kai slid the box back under the bed and left the room.

  SEVENTEEN

  Caraway’s list of known and suspected gun smugglers wasn’t a long one, but he knew it would take him an entire day to work through it. For a start, the people on the list were naturally wary of a visit from any kind of law enforcement. They were the kind of people who were able to continue their own particular trades solely because no-one had ever found enough evidence to convict them of a crime, so their instinct when faced with the Captain of the Helm would be to say as little as possible. His first challenge would be to get them to talk to him at all. And even if they agreed to that, it was hardly likely they’d admit to selling an illegal weapon.

  The one advantage he had – and he’d never dreamed at the time that it could possibly be classed as such – was the years he’d spent drunk and destitute in the lower rings of the city. He might not have broken the law in any significant way, back then, but he’d done enough stupid things to see the inside of plenty of jail cells. To Ayla and the Helm he might be a man who’d fallen from grace and regained it, but to at least some of the criminal underclass he wasn’t far off being one of their own who’d made good. That – coupled with the fact that he had little authority over the city except as it related directly to Nightshade business – meant that in the past, certain parts of the city had opened up to him more readily than they would to the Captain of the Watch.

  All the same, it wasn’t an easy task. By the time Caraway had navigated three prickly, defensive conversations without learning anything of use, he was ready to call it a day. But he knew he had to get the whole job done as quickly as possible, before they started talking to each other, so with barely a sigh he moved on to the fourth suspect on the list.

  Klaus ran a small antique shop that was widely rumoured to be a front for weapons dealing. To begin with he was as closed off as the first three, opening his mouth only to provide a strenuous denial of any illegal activity; yet when Caraway asked him very tactfully if he’d had any new customers recently – Perhaps looking for an unusual weapon? One you wouldn’t normally find in the city? – something flickered in his eyes. When Caraway pressed him, he hesitated before giving a quick nod.

  ‘I might’ve had someone in here asking about a pistol, not so long ago. Not that I was able to oblige,’ he added hastily. ‘But as a responsible citizen of Arkannen, I thought you might like to know about it.’

  ‘I see,’ Caraway said drily. ‘And what could possibly have led this person to believe that you’d be a good source of illegal firearms?’

  Klaus shrugged. ‘I’m sure I don’t know. Took me a while to understand what he was asking for. But I soon sent him about his business once I worked it out.’

  Restraining his scepticism with a mighty effort, Caraway nodded. ‘So what did he look like?’

  ‘Curly dark hair. Skin the shade o’ yours, more or less. Bit like old Miko who runs the scrap metal business over on Canalside.’

  It took Caraway a while to place old Miko, but when he did, the description made rather too much sense in the light of the current investigation. Miko was a Kardise immigrant who had lived in Arkannen for close to twenty years.

  ‘Kardise, then?’ he said, just to be sure.

  ‘I dunno. Prob’ly. He was a young man. Smiled a lot. Had a design on his left wrist … something like a flower.’

  Zander. It was like swallowing a hot stone, painful but undeniable. Caraway had seen that tattoo more than once during their training.

  Maybe it’s a Kardise tradition, he told himself, though he didn’t remember seeing anything similar on Miko the scrap metal seller. And besides, Zander had claimed he was from Mirrorvale …

  ‘Like this?’ he asked, using a fingertip to sketch the design in the dust on top of one of the ancient cabinets that Klaus kept purely for show.

  ‘That’s the one,’ Klaus said. ‘You know him, then?’

  ‘Yes,’ Caraway replied slowly. ‘I do.’

  He made his way back to the fifth ring almost in a state of trance. He liked Zander. Everyone liked Zander. He found it almost impossible to believe that Zander could mean any harm.

  And that’s what makes him the perfect assassin, his cynical side replied.

  He couldn’t look at any of the recruits when he reached the training hall. He walked straight to Bryan and asked to speak to him alone. Then he fidgeted on the sidelines while Bryan instructed his assistant and left her in charge. All the same, he forced himself to wait for Bryan to be out of earshot of the group before spilling everything he’d learned. He didn’t want any hint of this to reach the wrong ears before the appropriate moment – if that ever came.

  ‘Calm down, you blinking imbecile,’ was Bryan’s first response. ‘You’re letting far too much of it show, and you really should know better.’

  I deserved that. Caraway took a deep breath, let it out gradually, then said with only a trace of his former urgency, ‘But what do you think? It feels wron
g to me, Art. And not just because I liked – like – Zander.’

  ‘There’s only one way to find out,’ Bryan said. ‘If he did go and buy a pistol, he can’t be carrying it around with him. It must be somewhere in his room.’

  ‘Surely not. That would be asking for trouble, particularly after we searched the barracks. He’d hide it somewhere else –’

  ‘What, in Arkannen? You name one place that can lie undisturbed in this city for more than half a bell and I’ll call you a liar. Anyway, it’s a start. Even if we don’t find a pistol, we might find something.’

  As it turned out, they found something all right. Upon application of a prybar, the locked and keyless box under Zander’s bed – the one the quartermaster had dismissed as unopenable – gave up more evidence than they could possibly have hoped to find. The pistol on the top was part of it, yes. But underneath that were a handful of letters: a few sheets of paper that were unambiguously the record of a man plotting murder. Another, stiffer document turned out to be a border pass in the name of Alezzandro Lepont. And at the bottom … Caraway passed the last item to Bryan in silence. He didn’t know a great deal about Kardise democracy, but he knew enough to recognise this when he saw it.

  A government official’s signet ring, with the Kardise lion stamped into it.

  ‘So,’ Bryan said softly. ‘Looks like our Zander isn’t from Mirrorvale after all.’

  ‘No.’ Caraway wondered why he felt so depressed about it. He should be glad – Ayla was safe. Everything could return to normal. And yet …

  ‘Not just any Kardise, either,’ Bryan added. ‘The Leponts are a big political family. Been involved in government for years. They’re the closest thing Sol Kardis has to royalty.’

  Caraway gave him a curious glance, and he shrugged.

  ‘What? I’ve been in the fifth ring for nearly twenty-five years, student and teacher. I know these things. And,’ he went on, gathering steam, ‘you should know them, too. You’re not just Captain of the Helm, Tomas. You’re Ayla Nightshade’s partner. You have to know what’s beyond your borders, not just what’s in Darkhaven.’

  He’s right. Again. Caraway nodded meekly. The day had knocked him completely off balance, and the worst was yet to come.

  ‘All right,’ he said. ‘I suppose we’d better go and arrest Zander.’

  The recruits had nearly finished their training session by the time Caraway and Bryan returned. Ree saw them walk up to Zander. She saw Bryan put a hand on his shoulder. Seized by the sudden knowledge that something was dreadfully wrong, she backed away from the boy she was sparring with and began to weave her way across the hall, dodging the combatant pairs of trainees. By the time she was close enough to hear what was being said, others nearby had also stopped what they were doing to listen, leaving a widening pool of silence into which Captain Caraway’s words fell like stones.

  ‘We have a witness, Zander. He says you tried to buy an illegal weapon from him. Described you in detail.’

  ‘No, sir.’ All traces of Zander’s usual relaxed levity had vanished; he stood very straight and very still. ‘He must be mistaken.’

  ‘This your box?’ Bryan asked him gruffly. Only then did Ree notice it at his feet: the carved, keyless box from under Zander’s bed, wood splintered around the lock. Zander glanced quickly in that direction, too, and she caught the convulsive movement of his throat.

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  With his toe, Bryan flipped open the lid. There was a collective intake of breath as the nearer recruits saw what was inside. Zander frowned in apparent confusion, but he couldn’t disguise the draining of colour from his cheeks.

  ‘That isn’t mine,’ he said faintly.

  ‘You just said it was.’

  ‘The box is. The pistol isn’t.’

  The word pistol evoked another gasp from those who were too far away to see it. Ree bit her lip. Secrets. That’s what he said. But surely not –

  ‘You’d better come with us, son,’ Bryan said. ‘You’re under arrest.’

  Zander shook his head. ‘What for?’

  It was Caraway who replied. ‘For the planned assassination of Ayla Nightshade.’

  A pressurised whisper ran through the recruits, like the hiss of steam through a valve, but not one of them raised his voice. Ree’s nails dug into her palms. Zander wiped drops of sweat off his forehead with the back of his wrist.

  ‘I didn’t – that’s not –’ With reluctant respect, Ree saw his shoulders straighten as he gathered himself together; the colour came back into his cheeks. ‘Captain Caraway, that pistol isn’t mine,’ he said firmly. ‘But even if it was, surely a pistol alone isn’t enough to convict me?’

  ‘Not alone,’ Bryan said. ‘But added to everything else in this box, I’d say it’s more than enough.’

  Zander shook his head, his voice dropping to a murmur. ‘I don’t understand.’

  He looked lost. Automatically, Ree extended a hand across the space between them … then let it drop back down to her side. Assassination. He’s been planning this all along. He’s not your friend, and he never was.

  ‘Let me make it simple for you.’ Bryan scooped up the box and began sifting through the contents. ‘You say this isn’t your pistol, but this is your ring, yes?’

  ‘My father’s,’ Zander muttered.

  ‘This is a border pass in your real name, issued by the Kardise government?’

  Another hiss swept the room at the word Kardise; Zander flinched. ‘Yes.’

  ‘These are your papers?’

  ‘Y-yes …’ Zander frowned. ‘No. Some of them.’

  ‘So you’re saying that some of the contents of the locked, keyless box under your bed are yours, and some aren’t?’ Bryan snorted. ‘I wasn’t born yesterday, son.’

  ‘Zander …’ Caraway stepped forward. He had stayed quiet most of the time, letting Bryan do the talking, but now he put a hand on Zander’s arm and looked directly into his eyes.

  ‘You need to tell the truth,’ he said with soft intensity. ‘I’ll kill anyone who intends Ayla harm. You know that. So if there’s any innocent explanation for this, anything at all …’

  Please, Zander. Ree clenched her fists, willing him to come up with something that made sense of the situation. But he only shook his head.

  ‘I’m sorry, sir.’ He sounded defeated. ‘I just can’t think of one.’

  It didn’t feel right. Even as he completed the arrest, Caraway knew it.

  Zander looked bewildered and unhappy – that went without saying. He’d look that way whether he was guilty or not. And he must be a good actor to have fooled everyone for this long. Yet all the same, Caraway found himself responding to it. Because somehow, there was something missing. All the evidence, the gun-seller’s testimony and the presence of the pistol itself … it added up, and yet it didn’t. That unease niggled at him all through the process of locking Zander in the cells. All through his report to Ayla – Captain of the Helm to Darkhaven’s overlord – of what had taken place. And when he reached the end of his recitation, it hadn’t gone away. If anything, it was stronger than ever.

  ‘So that’s it?’ Ayla asked. ‘I don’t need to worry about being assassinated any more?’

  She was looking hopeful, the haunted expression fading from her eyes. He didn’t want to see it come back, but he had to be honest.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  Her dark brows drew together in a frown. ‘What?’

  ‘It was too easy.’ He ran his hands through his hair. ‘I … I don’t believe it, Ayla.’

  ‘But you found the pistol and the papers in his room.’

  Caraway nodded. ‘Exactly. No assassin would be that careless.’

  ‘It wasn’t as if he left them lying around,’ she pointed out. ‘You said you found them in a locked box under his bed. He probably didn’t expect to fall under suspicion.’

  ‘Yes, but Ayla …’ How to explain his misgivings? He grabbed the papers he’d confiscated from Zander’s room
and thrust them towards her. ‘Read these. Why would he write these letters and never send them? Why? It makes no sense. A gun on its own wouldn’t have been sufficient to condemn him outright, but with these …’ He shook his head, trying to find the words to explain his deep unease. ‘It’s as if they were written to be found.’

  Ayla scanned the top page before looking up. ‘He wrote them to send back to Sol Kardis. It says so right here.’

  ‘It is possible that with our extra security, even after weeks in Arkannen, he still hadn’t found any way of doing it.’ Caraway sighed. ‘Still, if it weren’t for Klaus’s account, I wouldn’t hesitate to mark this as a setup.’

  Setting the papers aside, Ayla reached for his hand.

  ‘But Klaus had no reason to lie,’ she said softly.

  Caraway frowned down at their intertwined fingers. ‘He lied about the pistol.’

  ‘Of course he did,’ Ayla said. ‘He didn’t want to be arrested for trafficking in illegal firearms. I have no doubt he sold Zander that pistol. Because how else would he have come into contact with any of your recruits? The only way he could have given such an accurate description of Zander is if the whole thing took place as he reported.’

  That was unanswerable. A first-ring gun-seller and a fifth-ring trainee would not, in the normal course of events, cross each other’s paths. One would have to deliberately seek out the other. And yet …

  ‘It just doesn’t seem right to me,’ Caraway said. ‘I think we should keep operating at maximum security until we get a confession out of Zander, or until we find some kind of corroborating evidence.’

  Ayla stared at him. Then, lips tightening, she pulled her hand away from his.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘No, you always do this. You always assume the worst.’

  ‘Ayla –’

  ‘We haven’t been able to hire the servants we need. The Helm are stretched to their limit, watching every step I take. And I haven’t left the tower for weeks, which means magistrates’ cases are building up and state visits are going unmade. We’re all at breaking point, Tomas. We need room to breathe.’