Rather than point out to Menikas that he was the one intent on moving the book from Yangerton in the first place, Kora said, “I’ve already been there. I can transport.”
“Why should I trust this woman?”
“She knew I was wanted by Zalski…. There’s no time to explain,” Kora said, when Menikas narrowed his eyes. “But she knew, and she could have turned me in. She offered to help me instead. You know all this.”
“And her nephew?” said Laskenay. She remained forcibly tense. “Kansten mentioned she cares for a boy. He’s not yet five. I consent to move the book, but I won’t put a child in danger. I refuse, absolutely refuse. What if Malzin or her men should track the book to this Teena?”
Kora blinked at her fellow sorceress. “They could only do that through the three of us, which we’d never let happen, and even if we did, they’d have no cause to hurt the boy. Laskenay, I would never stash the Librette on Teena’s property without her knowing. She’ll understand the risk. I won’t leave her any doubt. Isn’t this her choice to make?”
“Kora, I do not want….”
“None of us wants this,” said Menikas. “No one wants possession of that tome, except, well…. I wish the damn thing had never come into existence. But it did, and we have to do something with it.”
“Fine.” Laskenay’s hands rolled into fists, not as a mark of aggression, but of discomfort, of defensiveness. “Fine, I’m outvoted again. Perhaps this…. Yes, perhaps this arrangement is best after all. It does hold certain advantages.” And she turned to Kora. “As long as you promise me this woman will know what you, what we’re asking of her.”
Kora said, “Come with me. Meet her yourself.”
“No.” Laskenay’s face turned pale. “No, I have too much to do here and no reason not to trust you. When will you go?”
“Whenever I need to.”
“Tomorrow,” Menikas told her.
“All right then. I’ll go tomorrow.”
Menikas said, “I thought we’d be discussing this for forty, forty-five minutes. Is there anything else? Any news from the spy front?”
He was looking at Kora. “Nothing,” she lied.
“Then I’m going.” He caught Laskenay’s eye. “If I’m not back by midnight….”
“I know what to do.”
He grabbed a wig and light coat that hung on the wall. After scooping up some papers and folding them in the jacket lining, he left. Kora could not help herself.
“What do you do if he doesn’t make it back?”
Laskenay’s voice sounded distant. “Take Ranler and follow his steps before his trail goes cold. It’s a standing arrangement. I don’t expect he’s in greater danger tonight than any other.”
“Laskenay?” Kora could never remember Zalski’s sister lacking poise, but she was using her hand to prop up her head, her elbow against the table, and looked frightened despite her words. “I didn’t mean to traipse in here and shoot down all your ideas.”
Laskenay forced a smile. “I remember when I met you. You were positively mousy. You’ve come a long way, Kora, and if I didn’t value your opinion, you wouldn’t have been privy to this meeting. Menikas and I could have settled on some compromise. God knows we’ve thought differently before now.”
“Laskenay, there is something else. I didn’t know how Menikas would take it. You know how he’s been.”
The elder woman came back to herself. Her spine straightened like a rod. “What’s Alten up to?”
“Have you heard of Jonson Peare?”
“The name’s familiar. Isn’t he a mayor?”
“In Fontferry. Zalski wants to throw the town a big festival, have Peare assassinated, and blame it on us.”
Laskenay trembled. Her arm fell to her side. “Zalski’s going to Fontferry?”
“Only to give a speech, he’s not interested in staying. Listen, he’ll have soldiers in any city we might try to stash the Librette. At least his men in Fontferry will be working the assassination, not searching for the spellbook. The Tricentennial celebration will be across the river from the inn, but we can take the book to Partsvale while it’s going on. Menikas might not trust that group to keep it long-term, but….”
“Yes. Yes, we’ll have to do that, we can’t have the Librette around when….”
“We could send it off to Partsvale first, even. Bring it to Teena after the Tricentennial.”
“No,” said Laskenay. “No, the more I mull this over the more I see…. If Zalski does think we have the book, the safest place for the thing in all of Herezoth just might be with Teena Unsten.”
“All right,” said Kora. She threw her legs up on the table and crossed them at the ankle. “What don’t I know about this woman? Who is she? How do you know her?”
“I don’t,” insisted Laskenay.
“How does Lanokas? Did he know her before the coup?”
“I don’t believe so.”
“She knew him when we walked into her inn. Is she part of the League?”
“Not exactly.”
“Then what is going on? Who is she?”
Laskenay kept her voice from shaking, but Kora could have sworn only just. “She’s the woman you’re bringing that book to tomorrow, and there’s nothing more to say. Now, this Peare, the mayor, I believe he’s popular?”
Kora lowered her legs back to the ground, scowling a bit but doing her best to hide her irritation. “Let’s just say we won’t be if people think we murdered him.”
“That’s what I feared.” Laskenay leaned her head back, staring at the ceiling. “There’s too much,” she said. “There’s just too much.” And she looked at Kora. “What else do we know?”
“We’d know more if Menikas hadn’t made me leave in the middle of Alten’s conference.”
“Alten was speaking with Zalski? You should have kept on there.”
“You sound like Kansten. Like Menikas would have been happy to oblige me….”
Laskenay folded her arms. “Menikas has done more for this group than any person living. You don’t know the half of what he goes through in utter silence. He lives exhausted. Devotes every minute of his time to the League.”
“And you don’t see a problem with that? Laskenay, he’s obsessed.”
“It’s better than his giving up. You know as well as I do we don’t have enough men. Or supplies. The net around us is tightening. We need every scrap of news we can glean.”
Kora tried to appease her superior. “I heard enough to know what their objectives are. Alten’ll do his grunt work here.”
“Can you find a way to speak with the mayor when you go to Fontferry?”
“To speak with…? I have no idea.”
“Peare should be warned, if possible. Why don’t you take Ranler and Bennie? They can case his offices to see if we can’t pay this man a visit. If he can be a party to our goals….”
“We’ll have an easier time of it keeping him alive.”
That was the understatement of the century. Frankly, with the mayor in the dark, Kora could not see how they would ever stop his assassination. “I’ll take Bennie. But isn’t Ranler going to the silos tonight? We shouldn’t throw another job at him the next morning.”
“He’s going tomorrow night,” said Laskenay. “If all goes well, he can rest in the afternoon. If it doesn’t, I’ll send Neslan on the second job. He learned a thing or two tailing the elite guard with Bennie back in Podrar.”
“With Bennie and Sedder, you mean.”
“Of course.” Laskenay bit her lip. “I don’t mean to belittle what Sedder did for us.”
“I know you don’t. I just thought his work should be recognized.”
445
CHAPTER TWO
Jonson Peare
“Go on,” said Bendelof. She stifled a yawn. “It’ll take us a couple stops to get to Fontferry.”
It was five o’clock in the morning, and Kora’s vision of the apartment in the pre-dawn darkness was more of outlines than of ob
jects. Her sack was heavier than usual, with the additional weight of the Librette, and she moved it to her other shoulder. “Despareska,” she muttered, and rubbed her eyes before transporting herself to the forest between Podrar and Yangerton. The clearing was silent, unoccupied except for a squirrel digging in the earth and a couple of twittering jays. Kora returned for Bendelof and Ranler.
“Put out your hands,” she said. Bendelof jumped at the disembodied voice, and some seconds after, all three were in the clearing. Kora let go their fingers and staked out the next stop, a hillside that would hide her companions from the road. It was the place she had first seen Hal. The third and final destination was Fontferry itself: to be precise, Wheatfield’s dilapidated barn. Ranler and Bendelof popped into existence before its doors, a person-sized gap between them that Kora filled a moment later.
“You see the fence over there?” she said. It lay beyond what had once been rows of corn but was now a mass of weeds and shin-high grass. “Climb over it. You should be able to see the road to town from there. Head north and I’ll catch you up in the square, at the clock tower.”
Ranler said, “You have something else to do?”
Laskenay had warned Kora, and Kora thought it a good idea, not to let anyone know she was moving Hansrelto’s spellbook. Kora had even gone so far as to burn Teena’s letter, so that nothing could connect her to the woman if her sack fell in the wrong hands. “If you get a start with finding the mayor, I’ll catch up in half an hour. I shouldn’t be longer than that. I’d just be a hindrance casing a building anyway.”
Ranler looked put out—he deserved an explanation, his stare was accusatory—but Bennie admitted, “We will be less obvious with two.”
Kora warned, “Be careful in that grass. I don’t know what’s in it. I don’t think any snakes live up here, but I’m not sure.”
“We got it covered,” said Ranler, and rolled his eyes. He started across the field, Bendelof following, while Kora made herself invisible and transported yet again.
She clutched her chest, winded, as she found herself staring in dawn’s gray light across the Podra River with her back to a second barn. The total distance she had traveled was catching up with her. The door creaked a few minutes later, and she watched as a tiny red-haired woman, holding a basket of eggs, joined her to watch the sunrise. “Desfazair,” Kora whispered beneath her breath, but not softly enough. The woman heard and turned her head; spotting Kora, she dropped her eggs.
The sorceress lurched forward. “Mudar,” she said, and the basket stopped its fall before it smashed its contents. Teena grabbed the handle.
“Kora,” she hazarded, though her schoolmate’s daughter had never told her her real name.
“Teena, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you.”
“That’s all right.”
“I’m sorry for sneaking off before. That last time, I mean, when we first met….”
“That was months ago, no need to mention it. You poor child, God knows you had your reasons to be skittish, and I wasn’t exactly subtle.”
“I felt horrible after your letter. Like I’d snubbed you. I guess news of me has reached up here since then?”
“I’m not the only one in the village who’d recognize your name, we can put it that way. I knew you’d been busy. I didn’t realize how busy.”
“Teena, I need you help. We need your help. I hate to ask you, I do, but there’s no one else.”
“I already told you and I meant every word, anything I can do….”
Kora pulled the Librette from her sack. It was disguised as its author had enchanted it, as a book of generic healing spells. “This is…. I can’t tell you what this is. You don’t want to know. But someone wants it, very much, another someone people up here know much about.”
“I follow you.” Teena’s expression tightened, and she stepped away from the tome.
“It can’t harm you in any way, not unless he gets to it. If that happens I can’t promise your safety. Everyone at the inn….”
“I can imagine what he’d do. Does he know you have…?” Teena pointed at the book.
“He suspects. Strongly. But I can’t for the life of me think he’d ever discover my connection with you, much less consider you’re holding this, this thing for me. He thinks it’s in Yangerton. He’s sure it’s there, and when he realizes it’s not, there’s nothing to draw his attention to Fontferry.”
“I see. I see, of course there isn’t. That’s why you brought it here.” Teena reached for the spellbook, bracing herself, as though its brushing her skin might shock her. Kora was slow to hand it over, imagining Zalski at the spot where she now stood. All at once, Laskenay’s preference to guard the Librette herself made sense. Kora had to reconstruct the logic in trusting it to someone who had no clear affiliation with the League. “What do I do?” asked the innkeeper.
“Hide it,” said Kora. “Store it somewhere and forget it. We’ve tried everything to destroy it, we’ve been trying for months now.”
Teena glanced at the book she held, her eyes filled with fear. “Is it…. protected, then? By magic?”
“Passive magic. I promise you, the thing can’t harm anyone unless he takes it.”
“Wait here,” said Teena. She thrust the Librette at Kora and ran in the barn, then rushed back in record time with a shovel.
“No one should be up for twenty minutes. Business is slow. We can bury the thing here.”
“Let me,” Kora told her. “You should get inside. I’ll dig beneath this corner of the barn.”
“Yes,” said the innkeeper. “Yes, all right.”
“Teena, I won’t forget this.”
“I’m sure you won’t. I, however, am going to try.” The innkeeper placed her hand on Kora’s cheek. “Good luck to you. Don’t you do anything stupid and get yourself killed, do you hear me? Don’t do that to your mother.”
“I’ll try not to.”
Teena rounded the corner with her eggs and a swish of her skirt. The thought of Ilana held Kora paralyzed for a full sixty seconds, her chest aching.
If I could talk to her, for five minutes. That’s all I need, five measly minutes. She’d know what to tell me…. Come on. Come on, Kora, pull yourself together.
Kora turned invisible for the third time that morning and started to dig. To the east, the sun climbed steadily above the river.
* * *
Kora’s first thought when she saw Fontferry’s town square was that Zalski had his reasons, sending Alten to Yangerton’s plaza. The one difference between them was that Fontferry’s had been scaled down. The scaffold stood on the east side, but with the absence of a noose, so it looked like an innocent platform for musicians, or a company of players. To the west was a mini-market of sorts that continued on the square’s southern edge. A sprawling stone construction that had to be Town Hall formed the border to the north, while a clock tower rose in the middle. Bendelof and Ranler had joined a handful of people at its foot.
Though Kora had left Teena’s invisible, she soon that saw her bandana would blend right in in this out-of-the-way town where women wore aprons in public and more tied kerchiefs around their heads than not, and she had ducked behind a tree to cancel her spell a hundred yards from the square. No one had given her a second glance since, which she thought odd, as she was unknown in the area. Then she remembered the sheer number of people who passed through Fontferry each year on pilgrimage.
“There you are!” said Bendelof.
Kora asked, “What did you find?”
“His office is in Town Hall,” said Ranler.
“And?”
“It’s a bust. There’d be four easy ins if this were a night job. Being as it’s day, Peare has guards at the building’s front. I won’t risk going past them, and I won’t fiddle with windows in the sight of the entire town.”
“So there’s no way in?”
Bennie said, “There’s a back door, we think. It’s blocked by a stack of crates and I don’t see how
we can move them without attracting major attention.”
Kora smiled. “Leave that to me.”
“What?” said Ranler.
“Just bring me to that door.”
They walked behind Town Hall. Kora saw the crates immediately, four of them, stacked eight feet high. Small shops and homes studded the cobblestone street to their right, and enough passersby streamed through to make things difficult.
“Keep close to the building,” said Kora. “Talk. We’re three friends resting. Not up to anything. Not a care in the world.”
They had reached the crates. “Act naturally, in other words,” said Bendelof.
“Exactly. Act naturally. Mudar.”
Kora meant to shift the entire stack an inch or so, but due to her exhaustion, only the bottom crate moved. This caused no real problem, since each was two foot square and all of them stayed balanced. Still….
“This’ll take longer than I thought: ten minutes, fifteen, maybe. Mudar.” Kora gesticulated as she spoke; the motion aligned the second crate from the bottom with the one below it.
They continued to chat, Kora sliding the crates a mere inch at a time. The process was so gradual no one suspected a thing, especially after Bendelof leaned against the stack to hide the ever-widening sliver of a metal door. After twenty minutes the sorceress exposed a padlock and handle. “Tell me the door swings inward,” she said.
Ranler answered, “It looks to. And the opening’s wide enough, we just need to pick the lock.”
“I’d vanish it, but I’ve hardly energy to stand. The magic I’ve worked this morning....”
“We got this,” Ranler assured her. “Bennie, if you squat down and get to work, we’ll block you in. You got your tools?”
“I got ‘em. You two get in position.”
Kora and Ranler stood at such an angle with the crates and the building that no one from the street could see Bennie in the space between. “You good?” Ranler asked.
“The knob’s placed high and in the way, I’m at awkward angle….”
“Try kneeling,” Kora suggested. “You shouldn’t be too tall on your knees.”
The Crimson League (The Herezoth Trilogy) Page 32