Dead But Once

by Auston Habershaw

  When they’d finished the report, she walked to the makeshift table and leapt on top of it. “Apprentices, first Etheric position! Go!”

  Myreon walked them through their exercises. What few people understood was just how physical a discipline sorcery was. Channeling the Great Energies took as much control of the body as it did of the mind. The popular image of the wizened old sorcerer, decrepit and brittle, showed only half the truth: sorcerers who lived long enough to become old, usually aged so poorly thanks to the physical toll of their art. Furthermore, sorcerers who grew old also, through long experience, had become so attuned to the Energies that channeling them took less effort. What took these young people all their bodies to achieve, Myreon could accomplish with a quick gesture of the hand. What Myreon could accomplish with a quick gesture of the hand, Lyrelle Reldamar could do with a thought.

  “When are we going to learn to throw fireballs or something?” Bree, a round-faced milkmaid of barely sixteen asked, her tongue sticking out the side of her mouth as she tried to build a competent Dweomeric ward around herself.

  Myreon couldn’t help but grin—Bree was what her father might have called a “real sparker.”

  “Focus on wards first, Bree. We aren’t starting a war here.”

  “Hey! Hey, Magus!” She turned to see Gilvey Wilcar—a cooper’s son with a big, honest face and stick-out ears—standing with his arms crossed in front of himself. “I think it worked!”

  “Hmmm . . .” Myreon extended a finger and shot a little ray of cold at him.

  It flash-froze some of the hair on his arms and made him flinch. “Ow!”

  She tapped his leg with one foot. “You’re locking your knees again, Gil. Keep them loose—keep everything in your body loose and also focused.”

  Bree rolled her eyes. “That’s impossible.”

  “Why would I waste my time teaching you impossible things, Bree?” Myreon said coolly. “Again, please. You’re almost getting it.”

  Ramper slipped into the chamber, late as usual. Ramper was one of her more important contacts and one of her more talented students. Back in her days as a Mage Defender, he would have been the person she would want to catch to bring this whole enterprise down—he was the face of her organization. He vetted new potential students, he was given the enchanted stones to lead the apprentices to the new location each day, and he kept his ear to the ground for trouble.

  He was wearing a patched cloak and mismatched clothing. He bowed to her. “Magus.”

  Myreon waved him up, and she saw the twinkle in his green eyes. “What is it?”

  Ramper waved her over to a shadowy spot in the room. Myreon could see all the students following them with their eyes. “Mind your lessons!” she said, and then wove a ward against eavesdropping around them. “Well?”

  Ramper opened his cloak to reveal a half dozen finger-thin rods stuffed into various pockets. Wands.

  Myreon closed his cloak. “Where did you get those? Are they stolen?”

  “Easy, Magus. Easy.” Ramper smiled with his mouth closed. “I weren’t born yesterday. Met a talismonger, sympathetic to the cause, as it were. Willing to sell to you for a discount.” He reached inside his cloak, pulled out a wand, and held it out to her. “Have a look.”

  Myreon didn’t touch it, but did work a few auguries around it. She got an image of the talismonger—an old man, living alone in Westercity, in the shadow of the big artifactories there. He worked and slept in a shop with two extra beds. His sons have been levied, she realized.

  The reading could be a plant—maybe—but Myreon had no indication the Defenders even knew she was down here. Certainly they’d heard the rumors of the Gray Lady by now, but that’s just what they were—rumors. The Eretherian nobility might treat rumors as fact, but the Defenders adhered to a slightly higher standard of evidence. Slowly, she let a breath out. “They look clean. Sparkwands?”

  “Shoot a bit of lightning, yeah.” Ramper nodded. “Give a few of us these here and we could knock over a press-gang. Let all them poor souls free and singing your praises, no doubt.”

  Myreon shook her head. “Use those and the Defenders are down on us.”

  “They’ll be down on us soon enough,” Ramper countered.

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about.” Myreon stuffed the wand back inside his cloak. “I do.”

  Ramper ran a broken fingernail along his uneven stubble. “When you started this here, you promised me—promised us—a change.”

  “And change is what you’re getting. How many people have we fed, Ramper? How many people have dodged the tax man and avoided the press-gang?”

  Ramper shrugged. “Tax men come back, Magus. Press-gangs take somebody else. We save a couple, and a score more get levied. Seems to me we ought to see about making fewer tax men. Seems we oughta make the press-gangs think twice.”

  Myreon scowled. “I said no, Ramper!”

  “But, Magus—”

  “No!” Myreon’s voice echoed off the walls, well beyond the capacity of any eavesdropping ward to contain. Her apprentices stared at her.

  Myreon sighed. When she spoke, it was to all of them as much as to Ramper. “You have to understand: what you’re talking about isn’t a real solution, Ramper. Killing will only make things worse.”

  Ramper closed his cloak, concealing the wands. “Everywhere I go, all I see is empty shops, untended houses. How much worse can it really get, Magus? That’s what I’d like to know.”

  Myreon didn’t have anything to say to that. She shook her head. “Throwing lightning and fire around will only get you killed. Back to your places, everybody. Our time together grows short.”

  Class resumed, but everyone had seen the wands and that sight, it seemed, weighed on everyone’s thoughts. Even Myreon’s. Comparatively cheap as they were, the wands were a mark of power—a kind of power these people had been intentionally, systematically denied. Her refusal smacked of just one more such denial, and she knew it.

  It made her feel terrible.

  As the night sky began to pale and dawn approached, the class broke up. The apprentices thanked her, clutching her hand and kissing it, touching the hem of her robe, pressing little gifts into her palm—a Hannite cross carved from wood, an old tin ring, a small sweetapple, a faux talisman against sewer demons. She tried to give them back, but they wouldn’t have it.

  Ramper was last. He looked at her, his eyes green like the sea—they were the clearest, cleanest part of him, burning as though with witchfire. “Folks everywhere know the Gray Lady is there to help them. We thank you kindly, Magus. Not a one of us don’t understand the risk you take teaching us your secrets. I ask Hann to bless your name every night.” Murmurs of assent rippled through the group. Gilvey gave her a shallow bow. A couple of the girls blew her kisses and made the sign of Hann on their hearts. But she knew Ramper wanted to say more—to do more—and she was afraid for him.

  Myreon gripped his forearm. The muscles were iron hard and wiry—a laborer’s arm. “A few wands can’t change the world, Ramper. Remember that.”

  Ramper nodded slowly. “That may be. But a fella can’t be too careful, can he?”

  The look on Ramper’s face was a look she’d seen before, just not on Ramper. It was the same look Tyvian got anytime he was about to reveal some ridiculous plan. “Don’t do anything rash, Ramper. You should just go home.”

  Ramper laughed. “Funny thing to say, as I ain’t got one.” He scampered to the storm drain and Gil helped him up. In the shadows beyond, Myreon could see a candle flickering—Bree, waiting for them.

  After they had gone, Myreon scoured the cistern of any sign they had been there—every drop of wax, every scuff mark, every thread or hair—to protect them should the Defenders find the place. While she worked, she turned over the specter of the wands in her head. Who was she to criticize them? Wasn’t she the one who had spurred her apprentices on, given them the confidence to stand up for themselves, taught them that they were worth far more th
an they had ever been told? How could the bladesmith abhor violence, when she was the one passing out the blades?

  A voice, cold and flat as a lake in winter, came from behind her, although not to answer her question. “Well met, Magus. I trust thy efforts this night were not in vain.”

  Myreon felt a chill go up her spine, but she resolved not to overreact. She turned to see an animated corpse—little more than dusty bones and a few scraps of fabric—standing at the center of the cistern. It was not what had done the speaking, of course; it was merely the vessel. “What do you want?”

  “I want what is due, Magus. Your gratitude. Your respect. It is my realm you use, is it not?”

  “And what of your respect for me? Must I always speak with you through an animated corpse?”

  “For now, yes. One day, perhaps, we will meet. When you are ready.” Myreon sighed. The sewer’s advantages against the scrying of the Defenders meant, of course, that she was by no means the first or only such sorcerer to use them. The necromancer, whoever he was, had been here far, far longer than she had and he styled himself some kind of “king of the underworld.” She knew the type well; back when she was a Mage Defender and not a rogue sorceress, she’d tracked down and arrested a number of them. They invariably had large egos, poor hygiene, and questionable morals.

  “Can I assume I and my students have your indulgence to use another cistern the next time we meet?”

  The skeleton produced a thin, rasping laugh. “So presumptuous. You wound me, Magus. A year hath passed, and still I am paid no tribute, no respect. We are allies. Peers. We should work more closely. There is much I could teach you.”

  Myreon snorted. “I told you—no. You are to stay away from my students and keep out of my business. In exchange, I will stay out of yours. Understood?”

  The skeleton stood silent for a moment. Finally, the voice came back, slow and hard. “As you wish.”

  Myreon nodded. “Good.” With a wave of her hand, the skeleton’s enchantment was dispelled and the bones collapsed onto the floor. Only after the “presence” of the necromancer had left her did she realize how tired she was.

  “Home,” she muttered to herself, climbing into a water main. “A bath. A long sleep. A good meal.” She couldn’t wait.

  Chapter 5

  Complications of a Poisoning

  Breakfast had been porridge. Tasteless, lukewarm, beige porridge fed to Tyvian with a wooden spoon by Brana, whose practice using spoons was not extensive. Brana was not wearing his shroud, and he crouched by the side of the bed in all his huge, furry glory—haystack gold fur, big gold eyes, and tufted ears laid flat against his skull with concentration. Every time the gnoll shoveled a puddle of the abhorrent wheat paste from the bowl, he stuck his huge pink tongue out, the tip curled up toward his nostrils, as he maneuvered the spoon toward Tyvian’s lips. This visual did not improve the dining experience.

  At first it had struck Tyvian as unseemly to fight the act of being fed. He was not a child and, indeed, he was hungry. But at some point enough was enough. The spoon was coming for him again, and Brana was basically licking the inside of his own nose and humming to himself in concentration. “Brana, stop please.”

  The spoon came closer.

  “Brana, I don’t want anymore.”

  “Just a little more,” Brana countered.

  “I said no!” Tyvian rolled his head away and closed his mouth. This caused the spoon to make contact with his cheek instead of his mouth. The slimy sensation of his breakfast sliding down his neck was, thankfully, largely deadened by the aftereffects of the poison. Not deadened enough, though, for Tyvian not to know it was there, pooling in his bedclothes.

  “Oops.” Brana’s ears stood up straight and his tongue relaxed. “Sorry.”

  Tyvian scowled. “Well, what are you staring at? Go and get something to clean me up!”

  “Okay!” Brana trotted out of the room on two legs. The young gnoll was walking less and less on all fours lately, even when not wearing his shroud.

  Tyvian sighed and looked out the window. It was still early. Chance rested on the bedside table, taunting him. Gods know how long it will be before I can pick up another sword.

  In his regular life of late, not being able to fight would have been a concern, but not a deadly urgency—life had been quiet this past year or so, once they’d gotten settled here. Now, though, with this blasted rumor running around . . . well, the odds Tyvian would have to fight a duel or two in the next few weeks was very, very high. One did not threaten the status quo of the Eretherian Counties without making enemies. Lots and lots of enemies. He scowled, potential plots and scenarios to extricate himself from his mother’s elaborately woven cage running through his mind, tracing the threads of probability to their likely ends.

  Very few of them ended well.

  Kroth take that damned sorceress!

  The door opened, and he opened his mouth to tell Brana to go away, but then his mouth closed like a trap. It wasn’t Brana. It was Myreon.

  She came to the edge of the bed and stood over him, her golden hair braided tightly around her head. The damp of the early morning mist still clung to her dark green cloak—she must have come directly to him upon her return. She did not look sympathetic at all considering Tyvian’s bedridden state. “Who poisoned you?”

  Tyvian chuckled, in spite of himself. “No ‘How are you my dear?’ or ‘Are you all right?’ We’re just jumping right to the poisoning part?”

  Myreon did not seem amused. “I want to hear you lie to me. I want to hear you tell me it wasn’t that Voth hussy.”

  Great . . . just great, Tyvian groaned inwardly. “Who told you?”

  “Brana. Just now.”

  He rolled his eyes. “Damned gnoll. Asking him to keep a secret is like asking a fish to stay dry.”

  Myreon jabbed him in the chest—enough that he actually felt it. “No changing the subject—Brana should have told me, because this is something I ought to know, you miserable, lying louse!”

  “She tried to kill me, Myreon! Why am I getting in trouble for this? Shouldn’t you be out seeking revenge for your wounded lover?”

  Myreon scowled and ran a finger along the scratches on his cheek. “You kissed her, didn’t you?”

  Tyvian groaned—there was no point in lying to her. Myreon, with her Defender’s arts, could read his private chamber like an open book. She could just flip back a few pages and see the whole damned thing. She probably already had. “She seduced me. You must have noticed that in your auguries, Myreon—I wasn’t exactly a willing participant.”

  Myreon lips pressed together. “Don’t even start that. Don’t you lie to me like that!” She stepped away from the bed and turned her back to him. Outside, the sun was burning off the morning clouds, pouring through the big windows and reflecting off the spring green wallpaper. In this light, Tyvian could see the dirt on her cloak—black and oily, in streaks near the hem.

  “Myreon, I’ve known she was planning to kill me for a while. I was trying to lure her in. I wanted to figure out who she—”

  “Maybe I’m too tall for you! Maybe if I had bigger breasts and one eye, you’d be more faithful, is that it?”

  Tyvian grimaced. This was about to get unpleasant. “Myreon, you are an elegant—”

  Myreon’s eyes flashed. “Elegant is a word men use to describe furniture and sailing ships, not women, you consummate jackass!”

  “Beautiful, then! You are beautiful! Satisfied? Is that sufficient?”

  Myreon wheeled on him. “It’s not about being sufficient, Tyvian! It’s about being loved. About being faithful!”

  “I was—”

  “YOU KISSED HER!”

  “I stopped! Right away, too!” Tyvian tried to remember, exactly. “Well, nearly so anyway!”

  “You stopped?”

  “Well—”

  “Exactly—the ring did it! The ring made you stop—if not for it, the two of you would be wrapped up in each other’s arms!”r />
  “She. Tried. To. Kill. Me!” Tyvian spat. “I wouldn’t be wrapped up in her bloody arms, I’d be dead! Gods, woman!”

  Myreon waggled a finger at him. “No! I have a right to be mad at you, and mad at you I will bloody well stay! When we began our . . . whatever this is—you and me. When that began, what did you promise?”

  Tyvian groaned and closed his eyes. This again.

  “Yes! This again, Tyvian! What did you promise? I want to hear you say it!”

  Tyvian kept his eyes shut and let the words stumble out. “That I would never lie to you.”

  “That’s right! ‘Never lie to you’—your exact bloody words! And now here we are!”

  Tyvian opened his eyes. Myreon had her hands on her hips, her chin jutting out, her eyes flashing—just like she used to look when she was trying to arrest him. “Here we are where? With me not lying to you? You realize I have yet to tell you a lie during this entire conversation, correct? I admitted to kissing her, I told you she poisoned me, I—”

  “You might have mentioned she planned to assassinate you before the attempt was made!” Myreon rolled her eyes. “Or does that not count? How bloody quibbling are you going to get with me about telling the truth?” Tyvian searched for the words, but Myreon kept going. “Never mind! It’s you! Of course you’re going to quibble and of course you’re going to keep secrets from me!”

  “And what about you?” Tyvian wished he could point—he wished he could do anything other than be forced to lie there and get scolded like a naughty puppy. “You’ve been keeping lots of secrets from me, haven’t you? I can tell—your cloak is dirty, but not just any dirt. You’ve been in the city sewers, right? All these midnight outings, only back at dawn? Do I ask you about them? Do I?”