Tane rolled off the woman, panting. His eyes found Indree. Still on her feet. “Thank the Astra,” he breathed.
“Stop where you are!” A new voice from behind. Tane lifted his head to see a dozen uniformed bluecaps approaching from behind, pistols drawn.
Some of the remaining attackers threw down their weapons; others tried to run, but the constables restrained them with shackling spells similar to the one Indree was maintaining on the dwarven man. The human holding the shield bolted down a side-alley, and the shimmering barrier flickered and vanished. Three constables were after him the instant the way was clear.
“About time,” Indree said, but she was smiling, and the relief was clear on her face. “Take them to the Yard. We’ll want to question them.” The constables closed in, binding the prisoners with shackles and brass muzzles to stop the mages from casting.
Kadka pulled Tane to his feet and clapped him on the back. “Carver! Is clever thing, this darkness!”
Indree had released her spell on the dwarf now that he was bound, and she was tapping a small amount of silver powder into her pistol—firing charms didn’t carry much force unless enhanced with silver, but the powder was consumed along with the charm, requiring a new load for each shot. “Don’t give him all the credit. You must have dropped at least five yourself. That was… impressive.”
Kadka bared her teeth in a wide grin. “Is more they were not. And you are not so bad yourself.”
“I had spells, and my pistol. You took more of them with a few knives.” Indree finished tamping the ancryst ball and charm into the barrel of her gun, and looked up at Tane. “And the charm helped. That was quick thinking, Tane. It probably saved our lives.” She glanced at the woman he’d dazed, still limp on the ground. “Thank y—” Her eyes widened and she broke off mid-word. One hand dipped into her pocket, and came out with a strand of brown hair. “Cranst! We might still catch him!” And then she was off down the street, with Tane and Kadka sprinting after.
Cranst hadn’t gotten far, as it turned out. He was waiting at the end of the road where it met the harbor, just a few blocks south of the airship and its towering scaffolds. He must have known that his ambush had failed—that there was no escape while Indree was alive and still had a focus on him. A forced rictus of a smile stretched across his face, but Tane saw fear in his eyes. The last faint light of the setting sun glinted off the long knife in his hand.
“Drop the weapon, Cranst.” Indree levelled her pistol at him.
“They were supposed to stop you,” Cranst said, his voice trembling. “You weren’t supposed to come after me.”
“Did you kill Allaea?” The pistol shook slightly in Indree’s hands, but she kept her voice steady. “Confess, and it will go toward a merciful sentence.”
“She wasn’t supposed to be there. Another failure. I… I made a mess of it.”
“A mess of what?” A raw edge crept into Indree’s voice as her composure failed. “What did she die for? What were you doing?”
“You… you won’t get anything from me!” His voice broke, but he raised his knife in both hands. “I may have failed, but the time of the magical will come again! You can’t stop it!”
Tane took a step toward him. “Cranst, don’t!”
“For the Mage Emperor!” Cranst screamed, and drove the knife into his chest with both hands.
Tane surged forward as Cranst collapsed to the ground, face first. “Get help! He might—”
“There’s no point.” Indree approached slowly, staring at the crumpled body. “The blade went through his heart. I can feel him fading from the Astra. He killed her, and he can’t even tell me why.” With a strangled cry of rage, she aimed a savage kick at Cranst’s head. “Why?”
Cranst jerked limply at the impact, but he was beyond answering.
Tane wanted to say something, offer some comfort, but he didn’t think she’d welcome that from him just then.
Instead, it was Kadka who went to her. She placed a fur-tufted hand on Indree’s shoulder. “You found man who killed her. This is not nothing.”
“It’s not enough,” said Indree. But she didn’t pull away.
“He might have something that can tell us more,” Tane said, and started to pat down the body, trying to avoid the spreading blood. “Here.” A small purse, tucked into an inner pocket of Cranst’s coat. Tane emptied it into his palm. A plain iron key and… “A badge?” Not University Guard, though—this wasn’t what he’d used to get into the workshop.
A gold crown and staff on a circle of deep purple. The Mage Emperor’s sigil.
“Look at this,” Tane said, holding it up. “For the wards on his bolthole? Or maybe… all the magical extremist rhetoric, and those others with him… some sort of cult, like Stonehand thought?”
Indree leaned down to look. “It could be. We’ll question the others, they might—” She stopped, frowned. “Tane?”
“What?”
“He said something about a scrollcaster.” She was glaring at him now, in that terrifying way only she could. “What. Scrollcaster.”
“Spellfire, I nearly forgot!” Tane locked eyes with Kadka over Indree’s shoulder. “We need to get to Bastian. Now.”
Chapter Thirteen
_____
AT THE BOTTOM of the short stairway off the alley, the door to Bastian’s workshop stood half-open.
Tane couldn’t imagine that was a good sign.
Indree stopped Tane and Kadka with a raised hand, and then waved the constables forward. Four bluecaps followed her in, pistols and batons at the ready—she’d left the others to bring in the prisoners.
Tane glanced at Kadka, who tipped her head toward the door. He shrugged and nodded, and they stepped inside, disregarding Indree’s signal.
The bodies were the first thing Tane noticed. Six of them, and none looked to have died very pleasantly. He recognized four as Bastian’s “friends”, three humans sprawled on the floor and a goblin bent over a worktable with terrible burns across his back. The last two must have been with the intruders, a human and an elf slumped against one another, both in black coats and trousers like Cranst and the rest had worn. At first glance, there was no sign of a little sprite in a green mask and waistcoat.
The room had been thoroughly ransacked. Dark scorch marks marred the walls at various points. Books littered the floor, and the dais beside Bastian’s little library had been toppled, the tiny furniture left in pieces. Tables had been shifted and tipped over in what must have been a violent fight for the scrollcaster, and artifacts were scattered everywhere, most of them broken. The charms must have been incinerated with spellfire—only a few remained intact amid drifts of ash and scraps.
Indree gave the two of them an annoyed glance as they entered, but she didn’t waste time on reprimands. “We’re looking for a brass scrollcaster set with a peridot,” she instructed the bluecaps. “It’s possible they didn’t find it. Cranst made implications, but he didn’t say anything outright. Spread out and search.” The constables did as she ordered, sifting through the mess. Tane had explained the situation to her on the way—she hadn’t been terribly pleased, but she’d been more concerned with retrieving the caster than scolding him, so far.
“How did they get in?” Tane wondered aloud. “There were wards when we came.”
“It doesn’t matter now,” said Indree. “Do either of you have any idea where he might have put the scrollcaster?”
Tane shook his head. “No, I—”
He felt a pressure in his ears, and then Bastian appeared just in front of his face. One moment the space was empty, and the next, a fat little sprite in a masquerade mask hovered in front of him on iridescent wings. Tane took a startled step back. Beside him, Kadka did the same.
“Hello!” Bastian said. “Mister Carver and my dear Kadka, I’m so pleased to see you again. If only it were under better circumstances. I’d intended to contact you shortly, but my detections tell me you’ve already seen this unspeakable tragedy for y
ourselves.”
“What is it?” Indree demanded. “What are you two looking at?” She waved a hand through the air in front of Tane’s face; it passed through Bastian as if he wasn’t there.
“You don’t see?” Kadka asked. She mimicked Indree’s gesture, passing her hand through Bastian’s belly. Her eyes widened.
Indree raised an eyebrow. “I don’t see anything. A sending?”
Tane nodded. “The contact I told you about. This was his shop.”
“Ah, yes, I did detect a number of bluecaps with you,” said the illusory Bastian. “How strange this must look to them! I’m afraid they won’t see or hear me, nor I them—a shared sending seemed the most efficient way to contact you both, but I haven’t any divination foci for your friends. Under any other circumstances I would be very cross with you for leading the authorities to my humble shop, but tonight I can hardly complain!”
“Ask him what happened,” Indree said urgently. “We need to know where the scrollcaster is.”
“I know. Let me talk to the man.” Tane waved Indree away. She scowled at him, but moved to help her men search the wreckage. “What happened here, Bastian?”
“A young man came in with two others. He knew the proper procedures, my secret knock. A pity. I’ll have to change it now, and I did rather like the rhythm. Suffice it to say, there was nothing overly suspicious about them, other than a certain nervousness. I suspect now that their leader must have been the masked student we discussed—not masked this time, of course. He would have known how to get in the door.”
“Dark hair and eyes, a sharpish jawline?”
“Yes, yes that sounds like the man!”
Cranst. He must have come straight from Bastian’s shop to the street where they’d been ambushed. “Go on,” said Tane.
“My friends searched them for weapons and found nothing. The young men acted only after our guard was lowered. One of them raised a shield while the others cast spellfire at the warding glyphs around the room. It wasn’t terribly swift or skillful, but I must admit, we were wholly unprepared for such a barbaric attack! There is a certain honor among my colleagues, criminal or no. A certain way of doing things. But this… It simply isn’t done!” Bastian fluttered his wings in obvious agitation. “They were successful in damaging the wards, in any event, even with the redundancies I had in place. After that, more came. My friends were able to get me out through a passage in the back, at a… rather terrible cost.” He hung his head. “But I am afraid I have let you down rather gravely, Mister Carver. These… these savages destroyed the scrollcaster you entrusted to me.”
“But you still have focus for us,” said Kadka. “Why take these when you go, and not caster?”
“I had the scrollcaster on my desk, in plain sight. By the time I gathered my wits, it was already too late to save it. I fled with nothing but my life, I assure you! I have the foci only because I store my collection at a separate location. I do have resources beyond this shop, my dear! One must be ready to relocate quickly, in this business!” Bastian puffed out his chest slightly, as if that was a matter of personal pride.
“There’s nothing here,” Indree said from across the room. “What does this contact of yours have to say?”
Tane didn’t want to answer. She wasn’t going to like this, and he couldn’t blame her.
Kadka had no such hesitation. “Was Cranst. Scrollcaster is gone. Destroyed.”
“Damn it!” Indree slammed a hand down on one of the tables. “If you’d just told me about it sooner—”
“I know!” Tane snapped, and then, after a breath, “I’m not happy about this either. But… you would have taken it, and then we’d never have gotten anything out of Bastian. He was never going to talk to a bluecap.”
“Oh dear,” the Bastian figment said with a frown, and peered around as if searching for Indree and the others. His eyes passed over them, unseeing. “I hope I haven’t gotten you in trouble. It is true that I wouldn’t have spoken to a constable, if that makes any difference at all.”
But Indree couldn’t hear him, and by the look on her face it wouldn’t have mattered much if she could have. “Maybe that’s true,” she said, “but it wasn’t your decision to make. I know you think you’re the smartest man in every room, but… Spellfire, Tane, I should take you in for this. Obstructing my investigation.”
“If that’s what you want to do, I can’t stop you,” said Tane. “But at least let me get what I can here first. Bastian might still have something we can use.”
Indree looked at him for a long moment, prodding her cheek with her tongue. Finally she nodded, and gestured for him to finish.
Tane looked back to Bastian. “Were you able to get anything from the caster before they took it?”
“Not as much as I would like,” said Bastian. “But I was able to discern what it was used for last. It may have sent any number of papers first, but the last thing it did was receive.”
Tane narrowed his eyes. “What would he have been receiving? Some sort of instructions? From where?”
“If only I could say!” Bastian’s voice positively throbbed with lament. “It was taken before I could find anything more!”
“It’s… fine, Bastian.” He didn’t want the little sprite to burst a blood vessel.
“You can be proud, little man,” said Kadka. “You try to help, even at high price. Is good thing.”
“I did nothing more than my duty to Lady Abena and the Protectorate!” Bastian said, though he looked rather pleased with himself beneath his mask. “I’m only sorry I can’t tell you more. But if there is nothing else you need, this attack has left me with a great deal of work to do.”
“Go,” said Tane. “But if you remember anything else…”
“Of course, Mister Carver! I want nothing more than to see the man who did this brought to justice!” The illusory sprite turned to Kadka. “And my dearest Kadka, my offer is and shall always remain open. You need only contact my friend Issik.”
“Need to finish this,” Kadka said. “But when is done, who knows?”
“Ah, how you toy with my hopes. A delight, as ever!” Bastian’s sending bowed as deep as his round little body could manage. “I wish you both the best of luck!” And then he was gone.
Indree noticed the change right away. “Well?” she said. “You said something about receiving a message.”
“He told me the case was last used to receive, not to send,” said Tane
“To receive what?”
“That’s the question,” Tane said. “He didn’t know. New instructions, maybe?”
“Means he was working for someone, then, yes?” Kadka said.
“It might,” said Indree. “But it could have come from a subordinate, too. One of the people with him tonight. Until we know what was sent, all we can say for certain is that someone sent it. It’s something to ask our prisoners about, at least.”
“So,” said Tane, offering his hands for binding, “are you going to throw me in a cell now?”
“I should.” Indree sighed and shook her head, and for a brief, startling moment, Tane could have sworn he saw a smile. “You’re an arrogant dunce, Tane Carver, but I do believe you meant well. And we still have something to work with. I suppose you can keep your freedom for now.”
“That’s what I hoped you’d say. Time to do some questioning, then?”
“It’s time for me to spend a long night questioning the prisoners,” said Indree, “and for you to go home. Without arguing. Because you understand that I’m already turning a blind eye to several misdemeanors, and there is no force in the Astra that would convince the Chief Constable to let you into the Yard unshackled.”
There wasn’t much room to fight her there. “Fine. I suppose I could use some sleep.”
“I’ll send someone with you, in case Cranst laid any other traps.” Indree turned to Kadka. “I don’t know that you’re any better than Tane, but please, stop him if he tries to do something stupid like sneak into S
tooketon Yard?”
Kadka grinned. “If plan is too bad… maybe I will stop. Could be fun to watch.”
“I shudder to think what the two of you might consider a good plan, but I suppose that’s the best I’m going to get. Now go. I have to get these bodies back to the Yard.” Indree gestured to a pair of constables. “See them home.”
Tane turned to leave, hesitated, and looked back. “Indree?”
She raised an eyebrow.
“We’ll be back tomorrow. I’m not giving up on this.”
Another ghost of a smile. “I didn’t think for a moment that you would. Greymond’s office, first bell. I’ll expect you there.”
Chapter Fourteen
_____
GREYMOND SCOWLED AT Tane from behind her desk. “Would you mind telling me why I am only hearing about this scrollcaster now? Is it physically possible for you to tell the truth, Mister Carver?”
Indree answered before Tane could. “Some secrecy was necessary to appease his contacts in the black market. I agree that he went too far, but what’s done is done.”
Tane glanced at her, surprised. She looked all too much like an official representative of Stooketon Yard in her constable’s uniform with her blue cap over pinned hair—he hadn’t expected her to defend his interference. She ignored him, her gaze fixed on Greymond, but Kadka caught Tane’s eye and grinned knowingly.
Greymond hardly looked satisfied, but she moved on. “And the prisoners? Did they give you anything?”
Indree shook her head. “Not very much. I questioned every one of them with truth-spells, and as far as I can tell, they don’t know anything. A handful of overly suggestible students, and the rest pulled from various Halls of the Astra.” That wasn’t surprising. Astralites already worshipped the source of magic as a divine entity—it wouldn’t be a huge jump from there to magical superiority. “They responded to pro-magical literature like the pamphlet we found in Cranst’s room. Apparently he held regular meetings. Some of them are… rather fanatical, but they weren’t told anything about his overarching plans. They didn’t have badges like we found on him, either.” She indicated Cranst’s pouch, lying on Greymond’s desk. “Divinations on the badge and key confirmed that they belonged to Cranst, but nothing beyond that.”
The Flaw in All Magic (Magebreakers Book 1) Page 12