by karlov, matt
But at least he could house and feed himself.
He came to a halt. A dozen doors further down the street was a large, noisy inn, likely the establishment recommended by the young thief. But here, hard against what looked to be a small warehouse-cum-theatre, stood a well-lit lodging house, its sign showing a pale bird pulling up a worm. Through the open window Arandras could see a narrow, half-empty common room. Several patrons sat alone, some drinking, one sleeping; near the front, a group of four or five huddled around cups of chocol, speaking in low tones; and there, in the back corner, a pair of elderly Kharjik women faced each other over a dilarj board.
Perfect.
With a smile, Arandras stepped inside.
•
Arandras’s good mood lasted to the next morning. A misty rain had begun falling some time in the night, making the streets slick underfoot, but Arandras paid it no mind. He strode lightly through the fine drizzle, retracing his path of the previous evening, stopping only to purchase breakfast: a rolled flatcake containing almonds, dates, and several other fruits. He ate as he walked, savouring the sweet flavours, sucking his fingers clean when he was done.
The thin-cheeked woman who ran the lodging house had given him a top-floor room similar in size to the one he’d had at the schoolhouse, but with a low, slanting ceiling. Disappointingly, the cured timber shingles proved unable to occlude the sounds and smells of the street outside, or the slow grey light of dawn. But they were watertight — at least against this half-hearted rain — and, critically, the room was his for as long as he wanted it, untainted by the favour or provenance of the Quill.
By the time he reached the schoolhouse, his hair and beard were slick with moisture. Mopping his face with an equally damp sleeve, he hurried inside and made his way to the new workroom.
“Here he is,” Narvi said as Arandras entered, the words apparently directed at Bannard, who sat with several other Quill by the far wall. “See? Nothing to worry about.”
Worry about? Arandras looked across to Bannard, eyebrow raised, and the other man scowled and looked away.
“Right, then.” The voice belonged to Halli, the woman with the stubbled scalp and bandaged ear who’d asked about the inscription at the briefing. She joined Narvi at the central work table, followed by Bannard, Senisha, and another, unnamed Quill whom Arandras had also seen the previous day: a rat-like man with half a dozen brass and copper rings on his hands. “Shall we begin?”
“By all means.” Narvi turned to Arandras. “The urn, if you please.”
With the meaning of the inscription now clear, the group’s focus turned to the urn’s contents. Hour followed tedious hour as the gathered Quill took turns hefting, shaking, and frowning thoughtfully at the small pewter vessel. Narvi and Halli each attempted bindings to establish the nature of the sorcery sealing the lid in place, to no avail. Bannard tapped the urn’s bowl with a succession of tools and utensils, and tried to judge whether the resulting tone sounded hollow or solid. The rat-faced man — whom the other Quill referred to as Gord — produced a set of scales and an unformed lump of tin and pronounced the urn to weigh just over one-quarter again as much as the tin; but as nobody could state the precise constitution of the urn’s metal, nor how thick it was, the result meant little. Arandras observed the proceedings in silence, his cheer ebbing away as the morning dragged by.
“Maybe it really is empty,” Senisha said, balancing the urn on her palm with her eyes closed.
“It can’t be.” Bannard gave her a look that was half squint, half glare. “People are killing each other for it. How can it be empty?”
“I don’t know. It feels empty to me,” Senisha said. “What do you think, Arandras?”
Arandras shrugged. They’d spent the whole morning learning exactly nothing. “Maybe.”
“Let’s take a step back,” Narvi said. “We’ve got an urn and it won’t open. What assumptions are we making?”
That it matters. Arandras clamped his mouth shut against the sour thought. Maybe knowing the contents of the urn wouldn’t help; but on the other hand, maybe it would. That was the thing about riddles. You never knew what was important until you solved the damn thing.
“What if it’s not meant to be opened?” Halli said. “Maybe we’re trying to do something it’s just not meant for.”
“No,” Bannard said. “Look at the seam around the top. The lid’s a separate piece, without question.”
“That doesn’t mean it’s meant to open.”
“And that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to open it.”
“All right,” Narvi said. “Assume for the moment that it can still be opened. What could be holding the lid in place?”
“Sorcery, of course,” Bannard said.
“Of course. What else?”
Senisha frowned. “It could be something physical. A mechanism of some sort.”
“Good. Arandras?”
Arandras roused himself. “Not likely. A mechanism would make it top-heavy, which it plainly isn’t.”
“It’s sorcery,” Bannard repeated. “It’s got to be.”
A group of giggling children ran past the window outside. Gord glanced around the table. “What about anamnil?”
“What? No,” Arandras said. Weeper help us, what a stupid suggestion. Anamnil might shield someone from the effects of a binding, or prevent a sorcerer from constructing new spells, but introducing it to a bound object rarely made a difference — and when it did, the outcome was anything but predictable. “No anamnil.”
“Not what I mean,” Gord said. “Maybe there’s already anamnil inside.”
Halli shook her head. “I’d be able to sense it. Narvi, too.”
“You’d sense our anamnil, sure. That stuff the Falisi weave out of the Gatherer knows what. But what if the Valdori had something of their own? Something nobody can tell is there?”
There was a pause as the group absorbed the idea.
“That would explain why neither of you can find any sorcery,” Senisha said. “Wouldn’t it?”
Narvi and Halli exchanged dubious glances. “Maybe,” Narvi said, drawing out the word. “If the Valdori had such a thing. But that’s sheer speculation.”
“Perhaps it’s not anamnil, exactly,” Bannard said, thoughtful. “Perhaps it’s something more innate.” He gestured at Halli’s scarred head. “We know sorcerers have a natural resistance to fleshbinding. It’ll be weeks before Halli’s wounds heal. Mine are already fading. Maybe this stuff the urn’s made from is the same, just naturally resistant to sorcery.”
Narvi frowned. “Even if that’s true, what could we do about it?”
“Stop holding back,” Bannard said. “Blast the thing with as much power as you can. The strongest fleshbinders can affect other sorcerers, at least a little. Same thing here.”
“You think I’m holding back?” Halli said. “I’ve tried everything I can think of, and I can’t hear even a whisper of sorcery in that thing.”
“So stop listening and start pushing,” Bannard said.
“Not so fast,” Arandras said. “I’ve authorised scans, but that’s all —”
“Oh!” Senisha blinked. “Other sorcerers!”
Arandras and Narvi responded together. “What?”
“Think about it.” Senisha looked around the group. “Imagine the Valdori Emperor. Commander of the greatest sorcerers of his time, who’ve created armies of golems ready to respond to his every command. Who poses the greatest threat?”
Narvi shook his head. “Who?”
“Other sorcerers. Rivals, outcasts, whatever. The only people who could conceivably challenge him.”
“Exactly,” Bannard said. “So you make it impossible for anyone but the strongest sorcerers to break.”
“No, that’s not it at all.” Senisha selected a book from the stack on the bench. “Just think for a minute. You know exactly what’s going to happen if someone gets hold of something they shouldn’t. They’re going to use the best sorcery they can
to try and open it. And no matter how tough you make it, there’s always the chance they’ll manage to blast their way in.” She looked up. “So you create something that sorcery can never unlock. Here.”
She laid the book open in front of them. Dense writing surrounded a small, abstract diagram consisting of lines, arrows, and annotations too small for Arandras to make out.
“It’s like a finger trap toy,” Senisha said. “The more you pull, the more you’re stuck. Except this kind feeds on sorcery. Poke and prod at it, and it just becomes stronger. Try blasting it to pieces and it becomes practically invulnerable.”
Arandras leaned closer, trying to puzzle out the diagram. “So how do you open it?”
“Something physical,” Senisha said. “Fire, probably, or a blacksmith’s hammer.” She frowned. “It must be a lot weaker now, though. I wonder…”
“Wonder what?”
“If this will work.” And she grabbed the urn, pivoted, and hurled it against the wall.
The dull crack as the urn hit stone felt like a blow to Arandras’s gut.
“Weeper’s tears, what are you doing?” Arandras leapt out of his chair and lunged for the urn as it tumbled back toward them. But Senisha was too fast, snatching it up and throwing it against the wall a second time. A high peal rang out, like a struck bell; and as the urn rebounded, something skittered away at an angle, bouncing across the floor with the soft clink of a dropped coin.
The urn rolled to a stop beside Narvi. Slowly, he picked it up and placed it on the table.
The six of them leaned over, peering into the open mouth of the urn.
“It’s empty,” Bannard said.
In the silence, Senisha’s muttered reply might as well have been a shout. “Told you.”
Chapter 14
Dissatisfaction, you see, is our natural state of being, as natural to us as breathing. Permit me a simple example. Have you ever lain in bed, half awake, cursing your inability to slumber, only to discover when morning came that, far from being half awake, you were in fact half asleep?
— Daro of Talsoor
Dialogues with my Teachers
Eilwen held the sparker to the lamp and thumbed the nub on its handle. A weak glow flickered briefly around the white opal tip, then sputtered out.
Damn it.
She tossed the drained sparker onto her desk and glared out the window. Though the slender hand of the table clock indicated the last hour of the morning, the sun was nowhere to be seen. Heavy clouds crammed the sky, casting a fine, misty rain that seemed to float as much as fall through the air. The tree outside Eilwen’s window filtered the dim light even further, leaving her suite as dull and dreary as her mood.
Havilah had instructed her to sit tight. He had questions of his own he wanted to resolve, and until he told her otherwise she was to confine her investigation to the records and reports she’d already been over a dozen times. “We can’t afford a single false play,” he’d said, just before she left his office the previous day. “If you want to keep Vorace alive, this is the way to do it.”
Yeah, Eilwen thought, glancing around her gloomy suite. I’m going to save my Guild by sitting in the dark with my hands tied behind my back.
Somewhere in this very building, someone was moving their plans closer to completion. Not “someone”. Laris. Havilah seemed convinced that the Trademaster was behind Kieffe’s death, and Eilwen was prepared to accept the conjecture as a working theory. It made sense, as much any theory made sense. Certainly, the position of Trademaster had far greater scope for such undertakings than any of the other masters, and the woman’s reported dissatisfaction with Vorace’s leadership offered plausible motivation for what now looked to be an imminent coup. But there was no proof connecting Laris with anything, and the presence of Tahisi cannons in Qulah’s warehouse remained unexplained. And Havilah was already after Laris before this even began. Maybe he’s seeing what he wants to see.
She hadn’t told Havilah about the brief conversation she’d had with Laris just before discovering Kieffe’s body. Something about the memory had made her want to keep it to herself, and as she left Havilah’s office she’d realised why. At its heart, Laris’s invitation had been a mirror image of Havilah’s the day she returned from Spyridon.
Each of them wanted to use her against the other.
Frowning, Eilwen retrieved the sparker from her desk and tried it again. This time the glow lasted barely a heartbeat before vanishing. When she pressed the nub once more, the answering wink of light was so faint as to be almost invisible.
Damn, and damn again. The binding was spent. She had a taper somewhere among her possessions, but with no light to aid her, the search promised to be lengthy and irksome.
Or she could just go the Quill shop and get the sparker fixed. It wasn’t like she had anything else to do. And if while she was there she happened to find the fleshbinder who attended Dallin, well, that would be nothing more than a fortuitous coincidence.
The misty drizzle was breaking by the time she left the compound, though streaky dark-on-light clouds still scudded overhead, threatening further rainfall at any moment. Eilwen splashed through the shallower puddles, huddling in her coat against the unseasonal chill. The cool scent of rain hung over the city like perfume, muting the usual smells of food, fish, and animal dung. Wisps of fog drifted over the river, sliding beneath the bridges as though carried along by the current below.
The Quill shop occupied the entire ground floor of a low building several blocks back from the Tienette. Eilwen stomped her shoes on the thick rush mat just inside the door, blinking at the brightly-lit interior. On one side of the spacious room, a series of angled counters and shelves displayed a wide variety of items: chillers and sparkers; pots, bowls, and vases carrying a variety of bindings; garments that had been made softer, or tougher, or less permeable. On the other side, waist-high ropes marked a small queueing area, with tall partitions dividing the remainder of the space into booths. Groups of two or three sat around small tables within each booth, their conversations too soft to hear. A series of large tapestries, each showing the iconic ochre-on-charcoal feather of the Quill, filled the far wall.
Eilwen entered the vacant queueing area. The high counter at the end appeared to consist of three separate stations, but only one was occupied right now. A girl with improbably rouged cheeks looked up at Eilwen’s approach.
“Welcome, ma’am,” the girl said. Her auburn hair was cropped short in the Sarean style, but her words held no distinguishable accent. “How may we help you?”
“I have a sparker with a spent binding,” Eilwen said.
“Of course. Take a seat in the booth at the end, please. Someone will be with you soon.”
Eilwen made her way to the indicated booth. Aside from table and chairs, the stall was empty save for a printed page on the table listing the Quill’s services: everything from schooling to fleshbinding to earthworks. She glanced at it without interest, putting her sparker on the table and settling in to wait.
After a few minutes, a grey-haired woman bustled in, a bronze feather pinned above her breast. “Good morning, dearie,” she said, dropping into the chair across from Eilwen with a grunt. “Dead sparker, is it?”
“That’s right.”
“You’re sure you wouldn’t like a new one?”
“No, thank you.” The sparker was only a year old, and this was its first depletion. “A fresh binding will be fine.”
“Well, if you’re sure.” The woman lifted the sparker, her gaze turning cross-eyed as she frowned at the slender rod. “Let’s see…”
Eilwen always felt uncomfortable watching a sorcerer perform a binding. Mostly she was able to think of sorcerers as no different to anyone else: people who ate, slept, spent coin, and complained about the weather. But in moments like these the illusion faltered. To Eilwen, the world was dirt and sun and flesh; but a sorcerer saw beneath the world’s skin to that which lay beneath, a whole other world of spells and energies s
he could never hope to understand. To watch a sorcerer in communion with that world was to see someone looking past the veil of the mundane to something transcendent, and to know that she herself could never share that view.
Across the table, the woman licked her lips, her eyes fixed on the sparker as though on the face of a lover. Her jaw sagged open and her lips began to work, widening and relaxing in soundless speech. Eilwen stared, unable to help herself, drawn in by the rapture in the woman’s face. What do you see as you reach below the surface of the world? What secrets do you hold that I can never know?
Why do the gods bless you with such gifts, and leave me with only scraps?
The woman stirred, lowering the sparker to the table and blinking up at Eilwen. “All done.” She thumbed the nub and a flare of light sparked from the tip. “That will be three sculundi and five.”
Eilwen counted the silver out of her purse and passed it across. The sorcerer glanced over the bars and bits, then smiled and relinquished the sparker.
“Thank you, my dear. Was there anything else?”
“Um,” Eilwen said. “Actually, yes. I was hoping to speak to a fleshbinder.”
“Of course, dearie.” The woman folded her hands with grandmotherly matter-of-factness. “We only treat minor complaints here, mind. For anything else, you’ll have to go to the schoolhouse. That includes unwanted pregnancies —”
“It’s nothing like that,” Eilwen said hastily. “It’s about an acquaintance of mine. He died a few days ago, and I was told a Quill fleshbinder was there at the end.”
The woman’s brow creased. “I’m sure everything possible was done for your friend, my dear. We’re often summoned too late to make any difference —”
“Yes,” Eilwen said with forced patience. “I know. I’m not looking to place blame. I just want to hear how he died.”
“Oh.” The woman frowned. “Well. What was your friend’s name?”