by karlov, matt
No, her kills were a singular thing. It was not ruthlessness that drove her. It was justice.
Spymaster Havilah, you’ve misjudged me.
It was definitely time for a bath.
Chapter 2
Gods do not seek equals.
— Kassa of Menefir
Solitude
Rhothe’s Bar stood a dozen streets and half a world away from Arandras’s shop. It occupied the narrow middle ground of Spyridon, straddling the two halves of the city: far enough from the Library to entice students seeking temporary escape from the stuffiness of academic surroundings, yet also far enough from the low market to attract those whose means had diminished but whose tastes had failed to adapt. Its interior reflected its dual nature, with a typically rowdy taproom at the front, where young scholars could indulge themselves without fearing a master’s sudden intrusion, and a quieter area further back for those more interested in conversation than insobriety. Two upper levels held rooms that might equally be occupied by those climbing the social ladder or those on the way down.
The sky was darkening when Arandras arrived, his thoughts still preoccupied with the glimpsed letter. Bypassing the raucous taproom, he slipped through an unmarked door to the back room and its familiar scents of candle smoke, stewed meat, and dried apothecary’s rose. Three iron chandeliers hung from the recently whitewashed ceiling, each bristling with candles. Bar staff flitted between tables, serving meals and clearing away empty plates and mugs. A groan from the centre of the room drew Arandras’s attention: a party of three had one of the bar’s dilarj sets out, though from what Arandras could see of the board, the game had only a few turns left in it. Other games at various stages of completion dotted the room, but Mara was not present at any of them.
Maybe she’s not back yet.
But she was: there, in a booth by the far wall, her long black ponytail brushing her back as she glanced sideways at a second groan from the soon-to-be-defeated player, her cutlasses propped up on the seat beside her. Shaking her head, she turned back to her plate, mopping up the leftover sauce with a heel of flatbread. Arandras reached the table just as she put the last piece in her mouth, seating himself with a faint smile as she waved a greeting.
“Couldn’t wait, huh?” he said as she chewed.
“For a hot meal? Gods, no.” Mara swallowed, only getting part of her mouthful down. “I got back barely an hour ago. I haven’t even been home.” She gulped down the rest and grinned, eyes dancing with excitement. “Wait until I tell you what happened.”
“What’s that?”
“Well, let’s see.” She raised a hand and began ticking items off on her fingers. “Ambush. Sorcery. Death. Several of the latter, I think, though I wasn’t exactly in a position to confirm either way. You might have warned me there were others on the trail besides us.”
Arandras had no idea what she was talking about. “Uh-huh.”
“Well, that’s hardly…” Mara trailed off, eyes narrowed. “Has something happened, or are you just in a bad mood?”
“What? I’m not in a bad mood.” His statement drew a cocked eyebrow, and he shrugged again. “It’s not important.”
“Crap.” Mara folded her arms. “Tell me.”
“It’s nothing,” he said. “I just… I had a visitor from the Library.”
“Oh,” she said, and he could hear the unspoken words in her tone. That again. “You know what you need to do, Arandras? Swallow your damn pride and pay the damn dues. It’s just money, and not even that much. It doesn’t mean anything.”
Of course it does. He looked away. In any case, the morning’s visit from Onsoth had rendered the question moot. Yielding to coercion only ever invited more. Give way, and I mark myself as susceptible to such tactics. I become known as one who will bend. Until, one day, I come home to find a note on the table and my wife gone…
“Forget it,” he said, forcing a smile. “What’s this about sorcery and death?”
Mara grinned. “I thought you’d never ask. Get yourself a plate and I’ll tell you all about it.”
Arandras snagged a passing barmaid, ordering a plate of stewed mutton and couscous for himself and ciders for them both. “All right,” he said, sitting back in the booth’s padded seat as the barmaid collected Mara’s empty plate. “Talk.”
“You were right about the temple,” she began. “Finding that hill in the middle of the forest was a bitch. There was practically nothing left of the place. I’d have gone right past it if someone else hadn’t been there already.”
“Ah, damn.”
“With someone else again looking on.”
“What?”
“That’s what I thought.” She leaned forward, clearly enjoying the tale. “The first group were Quill. Your typical retrieval party, out of Anstice, I guess. They were just digging the thing out when I got there. I was going to leave them to it and head back when I saw someone else, perched up in a tree, watching them. He was good, too — still as a carving. Took me a while to be sure it wasn’t just a trick of the light. Then I saw another one near the base of the tree, and a third further back.”
Arandras frowned. “Who were they?”
“I don’t know, but they got me wondering what they were up to. I figured I might have been seen too, so I started back the way I had come, hoping the Quill would stay put. Then I circled back, keeping my distance this time.
“They just stayed put that night. The next day the Quill moved off, and they followed. And I followed them. All day. Same thing the next day. I think the Quill guessed they were being followed and doubled back once or twice, making this other group backtrack.” Her smile faded somewhat. “Honestly, I was lucky they didn’t see me. It’s just as well Druce and Jensine weren’t there. They’d never have managed it.”
The food and drinks arrived. Mara took a long pull from her cider before continuing. “Anyway, on the third night they finally got tired of following. I was woken by a scream like you wouldn’t believe, and saw this orange light flare out just past a low rise, like someone had set a tree on fire. By the time I got there, two of the Quill were down, and the survivors of this other group were chasing after the last one. So none of them were there to see it. But I was.”
Arandras leaned closer, drawn in despite himself. “See what?”
“One of the Quill wasn’t quite dead,” Mara said. “He got himself up on his knees and threw something at me. Well, threw it away, really. He couldn’t have known I was there. But either way, it practically landed at my feet. Seems he didn’t want his killers getting their hands on what he’d dug up.”
“So… you’re telling me that you —”
“Grabbed it and got the hells out of there. And here I am. And here it is.”
She drew out a leather-wrapped object the size of an overlarge scent bottle, placing it on the table with a satisfied grin. Arandras picked it up. The bundle was light, surprisingly so; he shot a quizzical look at Mara, but she folded her arms and nodded at the wrappings. Frowning, he pushed them away and set the object on the table.
It was a small urn, not even a hand’s length in height, shaped like two thirds of an hourglass, with a wide bulge at the bottom, a narrow neck, and a slightly flared mouth. The surface was metal, untouched by tarnish or corrosion, some of it elaborately carved with images and script, other areas impossibly smooth. Its mouth was sealed with a cap, the piece set too deep to offer any real purchase. He tried an experimental twist, but it refused to budge.
“Can you read it?” Mara asked.
Arandras squinted at the writing. It looked like a form of Old Valdori, albeit an unusual one — he could guess at a few words, but that was all. “Not here. Perhaps with the help of some books.”
“What do you think it’s worth?”
“Hard to say.” The piece was obviously of Valdori make: nothing else looked that good after centuries in the ground. “It depends what’s inside.” He shook it gently, but there was no sound. “Could be empty. Do you know
how it opens?”
“No. I thought the writing might tell you.”
“Perhaps it will. I’ll see what I can translate tomorrow.” He wrapped it again and tucked it into a pocket. “And I’ll ask around, see how much people are willing to offer for it.”
“Yeah, well, try to avoid the kind of people who’d rather kill you for it than pay you.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” he said. She tilted her head, studying his expression as though searching for something, making him feel like he needed to say more. “What did they look like, anyway?”
Her mouth twisted in a half-smile and she shook her head. “I don’t know. Mercenaries of some sort, perhaps. They didn’t wear big insignias on their backs, if that’s what you mean, or have loud conversations about their employer.”
Nodding, Arandras took a mouthful of stew and couscous; but before he could swallow, a new voice interposed.
“Couldn’t wait, huh?”
Mara laughed, and Arandras looked up to see Druce hovering beside the table, Jensine a few steps behind. “Move over,” Druce said, flapping his thin hands and collapsing into the booth with a sigh. “First things first,” he said. “Who’s sold anything?”
Good to see you, too. Arandras set down his fork. “One necklace of red porphyry disks for three sculundi, and two candlesticks of enamel and gold for one and a half luri apiece,” he said. “The last of the tower haul. Comes to four sculundi and six scudi each.” He produced three bundles of coin, each containing four silver lengths and six silver bits, and pushed them to the corners of the table.
“Ha,” Jensine said, sliding in beside Mara and collecting her coin. “Hear that, everyone? One and a half apiece.”
“Yes, yes, well spotted. I’m sure I said that at the time.” Druce pulled open his bundle and immediately sought to hail a barmaid. “Gods, I’m parched.”
The tip had come from the low market herbalist, who claimed to have seen the ruins of a Valdori navigation tower after venturing off the road near Lagen Cove in search of a particular weed. Arandras had been immediately sceptical — the coastal ruins in this part of Kal Arna had largely been ransacked centuries ago, their stones torn down and reused — but he mentioned it to Mara anyway, as he did all such rumours. She and the others had ridden out, and had indeed discovered the base of a ruined tower — not Valdori, but abandoned all the same, and old enough to suggest that whoever had once lived there was long gone. They’d found the trapdoor buried beneath the remains of the upper level, and the strongbox in the cellar beneath. Jensine had spied the shoulder-high candlesticks behind a creeping vine that had grown to cover two of the cellar walls, and somehow Mara had converted some cut vine into a saddle-sling and carried the candlesticks home.
Pickings since then had been slim. Arandras had discovered several leads that turned out to be false, and one that was outright criminal: a small Coridon-era watch-house that now served a senior Gislean cleric as a hideaway for his clandestine lover, a sometime galley cook from the Crimson Sails. On learning of the watch-house’s owner, Arandras had warned Mara and the others off, but they’d ignored his protests and looted the place anyway, waiting until the house was unoccupied and filling a wagon with its contents. Furious, Arandras had renounced his share of the proceeds, leaving the others to dispose of the contraband as best they could. Salvage was one thing, but theft was quite another, and Arandras had no intention of sullying his hands with stolen goods. Such stains, once acquired, never truly wore off.
“Anyone else?” Druce said, slouching lower in his seat. “Mara? Tell me you’ve got a buyer for that damn puzzle box.”
“It’ll sell when it sells.” Mara shot Arandras a sour look. “Of course, it’d sell a lot sooner if our man of letters here was prepared to help shop it around.”
“You steal it, you sell it.” The words came out sharper than Arandras intended, and he took a frowning mouthful of cider.
Jensine broke the silence. “Are you all right?”
“What? Yes, I’m fine. It’s nothing.”
“Arandras had the Library come knocking,” Mara said, not entirely unsympathetically. “Again.”
“So join them,” Druce said. “Problem solved.”
“I already told him that. It didn’t take.”
“Figures. Did he give you that look, like you just offered him a baby to eat?”
“Shut up now, Druce,” Jensine said pleasantly.
“Seconded,” Arandras said.
“The motion is carried,” Mara said, earning a pout from Druce. “Or does no-one want to hear about our latest acquisition?”
Jensine looked up. “You found something?”
Mara grinned and began her story again, and Arandras took the opportunity to finish his dinner.
When she was done, Arandras produced the urn and handed it around. Druce took it reluctantly, his brow furrowed. “This place used to be a temple, right? Which god are we pissing off this time?”
“One that couldn’t keep the walls from crumbling or the roof from falling in,” Mara said. “Don’t worry about it.”
“Maybe it liked trees better than stone,” Jensine muttered.
“It’s probably just another minor deity. Weeper knows the Valdori had enough of them,” Arandras said. “The urn might tell us.”
Jensine gave the urn a cursory glance and handed it back to Arandras, who re-wrapped it and put it away. “Where did you say the lead came from? Seems odd that three different parties would pick the same day to check out a centuries-old ruin in the middle of nowhere.”
“It was a page from some dead priest’s journal. Got it from Sten, I think, up on Goldsmiths Lane.” Arandras frowned. “Looked like a recent copy, as I recall — the sort of thing that might have been made forty or fifty years ago, but not hundreds. Or it could have been made last month, if someone knew what they were doing.”
Druce sat up. “What, you think it was forged?”
“It wasn’t fake,” Mara said. “The ruins were there. And the urn, too.”
“Or maybe the Quill got the urn someplace else,” Druce said. “Or it was planted there for the Quill to find.”
“What, so those others could watch them dig it up and then kill them? What’s the point?”
Arandras gestured dismissively. “It doesn’t matter.” In the old days, he and Narvi and the rest of their group would no doubt have found the conundrum irresistible. But he’d left all that behind with the Quill in Chogon, and he had no desire to go back. Besides, I already have a riddle that needs solving. All I need from the urn is silver from its sale.
He stood. “I’ll start shopping it around tomorrow. Unless anyone feels like delaying their coin for the sake of a few dead Quill?”
Nobody did.
“Right. Until next time.”
“Arandras,” Mara said. She leaned forward. “Don’t let them get to you. All right?”
“What, the mercenaries?”
Mara rolled her eyes in mock-frustration. “The Library, of course.” Her half-smile faded. “Join them or not, whatever you like. Just remember what they do if you let them in.”
The same thing the Quill did. The same thing they all do, sooner or later. He nodded, and felt rather than saw the affirmation of the others: Mara, as hard and as sharp as the blades she carried; Druce, who’d have looted the strongboxes of every temple in the city by now if he wasn’t so damn superstitious; and Jensine, who’d be happy simply to sit back on a green hill somewhere, a gaggle of children at her feet, and weave air and sorcery into cloud-puppets. It’s the only damn thing the four of us have in common. But it’s enough.
Druce’s belch broke the moment. “Off you go, then,” he said, waving his near-empty mug. “Send another my way, would you?”
“Best not,” Arandras said. “The Gisleans say that the All-God forbids it, you know.”
“Really?” Druce peered up at him cautiously. “What does he forbid, exactly?”
“Pickles.”
He c
ould still hear Mara’s laughter as he emerged from the bar into the mild night air.
•
Clade Alsere stood motionless in the middle of his study, eyes open but unfocused, his breathing slow and steady. The slow toll of bells from the nearby Kefiran temple joined with other, more distant peals to mark the hour, but Clade ignored them all. Insensible to the vista of roofs and towers washed clean by the mid-morning sun, heedless of the rolling clamour of traffic beneath his window, Clade extended his awareness outward, groping past the limits imposed by physical senses and on to the very edge of his perception, searching for any sign of the familiar, hated presence.
The god was nowhere to be found.
Satisfied, Clade regathered the strands of his awareness. The room around him snapped into focus, bringing with it a sudden rush of sensation: the noise of lumbering wagons and shouting hawkers from the thoroughfare outside, the cool whisper of air against his face and neck, the scent of old paper and new timber. Four upholstered armchairs faced each other around a low wooden table, the arrangement filling the entire front half of the room. Behind him stood his desk, the polished eucalypt surface scarcely visible beneath weighted stacks of paper. Crowded shelves lined the walls, save for the space near the inner door where he’d affixed a series of sketches showing some of the sights of Anstice: the powder mill, Merchants’ Bridge, and the winged leopard that crouched above the entrance to the city chambers. The study was light, airy and spacious; a fitting home for the Overseer of Oculus operations in Anstice.
He would miss this suite, when the time came. He had lived here for almost two years now, longer than anywhere since Zeanes. Despite his eagerness to be gone, he’d developed an unexpected affinity to the place, as though at some point the walls had surrendered their indifference and become fellow conspirators in his long, lonely struggle to find a way out, away from the Oculus, away from the god. They had become his confidantes, the only witnesses to his failures and frustrations and slow, painstaking progress; the only counsellors to whom he dared speak his mind, and then only in whispers.