by Lisa Shearin
“He’s been taken into custody for questioning.”
I looked from one to the other. “Who is—”
“Our chief mirror mage,” Brina said.
“You think he sabotaged his own mirror?”
“Anything’s possible, and we operate under that assumption until it’s disproven. Tellan Bain was responsible for the preparation and protection of that mirror. He knows the procedure if it’s tampered with.”
“Brina, I’d like to speak with Raine alone.”
“Yes, sir.” If she didn’t like it, she gave no sign. She simply went and stood on the other side of the room.
He glanced at Dalis and raised one brow. The healer rolled her eyes. “Five minutes. That’s all you get. If I see you’re getting too tired, it’s less.”
I smiled, “Thank you, Dalis.”
The healer retreated to the other side of the room. If Markus hadn’t been dead for several minutes, she would have given us some privacy and left the room. But he had died and Dalis wasn’t taking any chances. I was grateful for it. I wasn’t taking any chances with Markus, either.
Markus glanced at Dalis. No expression, no raised eyebrow, just a glance. Someone who didn’t know Markus wouldn’t have read anything into it. I knew Markus. I heard plenty.
“She’s Justinius’s personal healer. I know and trust her.” My mouth formed the words in complete silence. Markus read lips and so did I. Even across the room, Brina would be able to hear even the barest whisper. She was an elf. Our ears weren’t just there to look good. Markus said he wanted to speak to me alone, and I was going to maintain his privacy. I sat facing Markus with my back to Brina and Dalis.
Markus blinked in response, took a breath, and let it out. Translation: Good. If you trust her, I trust her.
A man of few words and fewer expressions was Markus.
“And by not actually speaking, you can save even more strength,” I continued speaking soundlessly.
One corner of Markus’s lips twitched upward. “And Brina can’t hear us. I can trust Dalis; you can trust Brina.”
“Right now, anyone I don’t know, I don’t trust. I won’t take the chance. Not with you.”
He opened his mouth to speak, and I held up a hand, “Brina said there wasn’t anything fishy on your end before she came through. Did that change before you stepped in?”
Markus’s flat look spoke volumes.
“I know, you’d wouldn’t have stepped through if it had. I had to ask. They could have thrown you in. You trusted your mirror mage?”
Markus nodded once.
I told him about what Tam and Imala had said about the Rak’kari and the very strong possibility of Khrynsani involvement. Then I told him about the high probability of elven involvement—and a Khrynsani partnership. Markus was far from peak condition, but he didn’t need anything kept from him that could shed light on what had been done to him.
One of the apartment’s massive double doors opened as the door sentries admitted Mychael and Isibel. Neither looked pissed. It wasn’t exactly sibling harmony, but I’d take it.
Markus pulled himself up in bed, and held his hands out to Isibel.
The new elven ambassador smiled like a delighted little girl and ran to the director of elven intelligence who enfolded her in a hug.
Well, that was something you didn’t see every day.
Markus and Isibel were happy. Dalis? Not so much. In her opinion, that was entirely too much activity for her patient, but since Mychael was here, she’d yield that decision to him. They exchanged glances, Mychael nodded, Dalis sighed.
Isibel told Markus what had happened to the Blue Rose—and to Ambassador Santis Eldor. I didn’t know how well they’d known each other, but the late ambassador had been a lifelong diplomat, a highly educated, well-traveled man of even temper and open mind. I’d been briefed on the delegates I didn’t already know and had been looking forward to meeting him.
We let them have a few minutes of quiet reunion. It was Markus who opened up the conversation to include me and Mychael—but especially Mychael.
“You’re ready for this,” he was telling her. He cut a bemused glance at Mychael. “And don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.”
Mychael raised his hands defensively. “I never said she wasn’t qualified. I merely would have liked to have known that she’d advanced to first in line for a major ambassadorship.”
Isibel patted Markus’s hand. “Don’t worry. We’re past that part. Mychael and I have been talking.”
“Not yelling?” I asked.
“Not yelling,” she assured me with a smile. “My last promotion coincided with when he was chasing Sarad Nukpana for the Saghred.”
“A few days before we tracked him to Mermeia,” Mychael added.
“You were most definitely busy,” I noted.
“Yes, I was.”
“It was a notable promotion, but not worth disturbing my brother while he was fighting the forces of evil,” she flashed me a smile, “and attempting to woo my future sister-in-law. Both were infinitely more important than my promotion.”
“I can assure you that Isibel is a natural-born diplomat,” Markus told Mychael. “As you’ll see for yourself in the coming days.” He smiled. “You and she share many similarities. I will admit to working behind the scenes to ensure that talent like hers didn’t get pushed aside because she is a woman.”
If Markus believed in her, that was more than enough for me. For anyone in the elven diplomatic service to even remotely take her seriously, Isibel would have to be twice as smart and work three times as hard as any man.
“When there was an opening on Santis Eldor’s senior staff,” Markus was saying, “I recommended Isibel, and after meeting her, Ambassador Eldor wholeheartedly agreed with me. I know that he was looking forward to this being her introduction on the world stage.” A shadow crossed Markus’s face. “He never anticipated that he wouldn’t be by her side. I will be.”
My friend said those last three words as though they were a solemn oath. I swore an oath to myself that I’d keep him safe so he could fulfill it.
Chapter 10
It was time to go see another friend. I liked the friend, just not what he did for a living.
Vidor Kalta was a nachtmagus.
Most people thought a necromancer and a nachtmagus were the same thing. To use a snake analogy, necromancers were garden snakes and a nachtmagus was a cobra. Necromancers could only communicate with the dead. They did séances, detected hauntings, and could tell you if you had a frisky poltergeist or an ancestor who simply refused to leave.
A nachtmagus could not only communicate with your dearly departed, he or she could control them or any other dead—in all of their forms. I’d heard that given enough time, money, and motivation, a nachtmagus could raise the dead.
Since coming to Mid, I’d found that there’s actually a Conclave college major in necromancy. The college produced both necromancers and nachtmagi. Most of the students with stronger talent became nachtmagi, and the lesser talents were necromancers. There was more money in the former, and if you had the talent, why not go big or go home?
In my opinion, no one majored in either one unless they were just plain weird. In theory, the Conclave college had a way to weed out the weirdos. I don’t know what that said about the department’s graduates. They wanted to work with dead things, but at the same time, they couldn’t be weird. It had to be the college’s smallest graduating class.
Vidor Kalta taught graduate-level courses in the necrology department. About a month ago, I’d gotten to experience firsthand just how good he was at his chosen calling. He’d been called to help us discover who or what had killed an elven general—and how. The “how” had been the truly creepy part.
As a seeker, I could pick up impressions from inanimate objects touched by someone I was looking for. I discovered that day that a dead body qualified as the ultimate inanimate object. Thanks to Vidor’s expertise, we’d found that after e
scaping the Saghred, Sarad Nukpana was using a black magic ritual to regenerate his soul into a physical body by taking the lifeforces and memories of selected victims. Nukpana had selected the elven general as one of his victims for his vast knowledge of elven military intelligence. The general had been but one victim. Thanks to Vidor’s knowledge, there had only been one subsequent victim, and it was an individual who’d been even more evil than Sarad Nukpana—and yes, it was possible.
Vidor Kalta was tall, thin, and born to wear funereal black. His dark hair was cropped close to his head, probably as a safety precaution. I’d found out the hard way that corpses could get grabby. Kalta’s features were sharp, and his face had the pallor one would expect of someone who worked mostly nights. But it was his eyes that gave him away. Black and bright as a raven’s, Vidor Kalta’s eyes were a reflection of a quick mind, a keen intellect, and an incredible power. Power that was all the more impressive because of his restraint. It was as if the man had Death on a leash and it was following him around like a puppy.
When Phaelan and I came into the room, Vidor was replacing the tarp over one of the bodies.
“We’ve got to stop meeting like this,” I told him.
The nachtmagus smiled in a quick flash of white teeth. “A murder victim in the room doesn’t make for a very pleasant social encounter, does it?”
“No, it doesn’t. So, it was murder?”
“Of the most dark and evil kind.”
Of course, it was.
The last time I’d worked with Vidor, we’d been in a basement room in the citadel. We were still in the citadel, but this room was aboveground and even had a window, which admitted some life-affirming sunshine. If Phaelan’s furtive glances were any indication, it also provided a handy escape route. I wondered if the distance to the ground was survivable. I also wondered whether Phaelan cared. The room was also larger, which would give my cousin room for his running jump—or, considering that Mychael and Vegard were here, room to swing and toss a dead body that might not have the decency to stay that way.
I only included Mychael and Vegard among the potential tossers. I knew better than to depend on Phaelan to touch the thing, even if it meant throwing it out a window.
My cousin had stationed himself in the corner closest to the door, and a couple of flying leaps to the window. He liked to keep his escape options open. Phaelan didn’t like dead bodies, but he was absolutely terrified of nachtmagi.
Vidor Kalta had asked Phaelan to be here. Vidor had asked; I had insisted. If the nachtmagus thought Phaelan might have seen something helpful on that ship, he’d come ashore and share it with the rest of us if I’d had to drag him by his boots—or send Vegard and a couple of his brother Guardians to do it. Fortunately, Phaelan had come along quietly. But if one of those bodies moved, my cousin wasn’t going to stay quiet or still.
To be honest, neither would I.
The room was empty except for two tables with the two bodies—the captain and first mate of the pirate ship that’d attacked the Blue Rose and killed Ambassador Eldor. Thankfully, the bodies were covered. Even more thankfully, they weren’t moving.
On the floor next to the tables was a sight that stunned me.
The two bags of goblin gold the pirate/assassins had been paid with.
I looked at my cousin in dumbfounded disbelief.
“That’s tainted gold,” he said. “I don’t want anything to do with it, and neither do my men.”
“You’re a pirate.”
“A pirate who doesn’t spend money taken off a ghost ship. That’s just asking for trouble.”
Mychael was pressing his lips together against a smile. “Any idea how they died?” he asked Vidor.
“I have a theory, but I’ve asked an expert to confirm it.”
At that moment, the door opened, and Tam came in.
Vidor stepped forward to shake Tam’s hand. “Primaru Nathrach, I’m so glad you could join us.”
“A room with you and two dead bodies?” Tam quipped. “How could I resist?”
“Your expert, I take it?” I asked Vidor.
“If I am, it’s the nicest thing I’ve been called today,” Tam said. “And this is certainly the most welcome I’ve felt. I think word has gotten around about who was behind Ambassador Eldor’s assassination. Either that, or I’m simply a lot less popular than I thought.”
Mychael scowled.
“None of my men have been on shore,” Phaelan told him.
“I’m not blaming you or your crew,” Mychael said. “The elven embassy knows what happened. I imagine that’s the source of any rumors.”
Vidor pulled back the tarp over the first body.
“Will Saltman,” Phaelan muttered and quickly looked away.
Phaelan had looked away. I wanted to.
Will Saltman had seen his death. That is, if his death had been delivered in the most horrifying, scare-you-out-of-your-skin way imaginable.
Tam reached down with his thumb and forefinger and opened one of the man’s eyes even wider.
Phaelan shifted one step closer to the window.
Tam didn’t say a word; he simply replaced the tarp over the face of Captain Saltman and peeled back the one covering his first mate, George Pennett.
Same terror-stricken expression. Tam repeated the same eye exam.
“Death curse,” he said, covering the man’s face. “Khrynsani.”
“Crap,” I said.
“To say the least.”
“What did you see in their eyes?”
“Broken blood vessels. The curse terrifies, paralyses the major muscles, and constricts the blood vessels. Horrible way to die.”
“It’s not like there’s a good death curse,” Phaelan muttered.
“Are you certain there was no living person on the ship other than the captives?” Vidor asked.
“Positive,” Phaelan replied. “We looked. My men are professionals. If there’s anything worth having on a ship, they’ll find it.”
“You’d said that there were nineteen dead men on deck and three more belowdecks.”
A muscle twitched in my cousin’s jaw. “Correct.”
“Might your men have—”
“They didn’t want to spend one second longer on that ship than they had to. So I told them they had to do a thorough job. I sure as hell wasn’t going to go to the trouble to haul two bodies back here and then do a half-assed job in the ship search.”
“Of course, forgive me.”
“No problem. Just establishing that we looked, and if there’d been anything to find, we’d have found it.”
“Your boys typically focus on shiny things,” I said. “This wouldn’t have been anything they’d want to stick into their pockets and bring home with them.”
“Was there any area belowdecks that made you or any of your men want to get out of there?” Tam asked.
“All of them.”
Mychael nodded. He knew where we were going with this. “Any area where that impulse was especially strong could indicate a repelling spell. It would cause a more than rational fear of a cabin or a specific area of the ship. That and a veil could have hidden a mirror mounted to a wall.”
Phaelan blanched. “Mirror?”
I hated mirrors, but my mirror hatred was nothing compared to Phaelan’s feelings. Yes, my cousin was vain about his looks, but the only mirrors he allowed on his ship were for shaving, and it was a near mutiny-level offense if a crewman didn’t secure that mirror in a box or duffel after using it.
“After my men searched the ship,” Phaelan replied, “I went back over it myself. I’ll admit I made quick work of it, but I wasn’t sloppy. Five captives held by a crew of dead men is about as spooky as it gets. I didn’t like where I was, but I didn’t find or feel anything that made me want to run out of there.”
“Were there any rats on the ship?” Tam asked quietly.
That question won him the silent and undivided attention of everyone in the room.
Phaela
n’s forehead creased as he thought. “Come to think of it, there weren’t any. And Will Saltman wasn’t known for running a clean ship. There should have been rats, most definitely in the hold, but there weren’t.”
“A Gate,” Tam said.
Technically, I knew that a Gate could be torn anywhere, even on a ship under sail. But I’d never heard of a specific instance.
“Rats may be repellent to us,” Tam said, “but some of the acts we commit are so abhorrent to rats that they would throw themselves off a ship rather than be anywhere near it.”
I suddenly remembered the rats running from the bunker where Sarad Nukpana had hidden while he’d been regenerating his body—and where his soul had temporarily infested Tam’s body.
The rats had run like hell from that, and so had we. I’d hated myself for running, but it’d been necessary if we were going to live long enough to get Nukpana’s rotten soul out of Tam’s body before that infestation became permanent. I’d tried to tell myself that it was a tactical retreat, but that hadn’t lessened my guilt one bit. It’d been the rats that had showed us the way out of that underground maze, saving our lives, and, less than an hour later, Tam’s as well.
I’d been in a room when a Gate had been torn open. Twice.
If you asked me, the suicidal rats had the right idea.
“Any higher-level Khrynsani mage can open a Gate,” Tam said. “Evil is more needed than strength.”
Gate fuel included terror, torture, and death. The more that was produced, the larger and more stable the Gate.
“One mage?” I asked Tam.
“Maybe a temple guard or two with him, but one mage could have done it alone. He wouldn’t have needed much time to do what he did. One mage and one word.”
Killing with a single word sounded impossible, but it wasn’t. I’d seen it done. Once.
Tam had done it.
One mage had ripped a Gate onto the Fancy Devil, scared every rat into jumping overboard, struck the crew dead with a single word, and left the way he’d arrived.
“He left the captives alive as witnesses,” I said. “And the gold to frame the goblin government for all of it.”
Mychael nodded. “It was worth more to the Khrynsani that those two bags of gold with the Mal’Salin royal seal be found. We know the Khrynsani and the goblin government are no longer the same.”