The Knife in the Dark (The Seven Signs Book 2)

by D. W. Hawkins

  He wanted to start breaking things.

  “It’s nobody’s fault,” is what he said. After a deep breath, he realized that he meant it.

  “I saw her at the Bruising Stretch,” Shawna said. “She was there, watching me spar. When I went looking for her, though, she was gone. No one had seen her, or even knew who she was.”

  “She’s nimble,” Dormael said, unable to keep a smile from his face. “I swear she could hide between shafts of sunlight, if she wanted to. Where could she have gone?” The last bit came out a bit more anguished than he had meant to sound, and he felt his brother’s comforting hand on his shoulder.

  “We’ll find her, brother. The girl’s too smart to get lost for long,” Allen said.

  Everyone stood around him, crowded around a bench in his sitting room. He was plopped onto the seat, his shoulders slumped, his stomach a mess of fluttering anxiety. A fire burned in his hearth, the wood crackling with warmth. The light flickered over the walls of his room, playing over the odd implements and trophies he’d collected over the years.

  “I just hope no one grabbed her,” Dormael said.

  “They wouldn’t have any reason,” Shawna said. “I killed Grant, remember? She’s beyond the reach of that creature forever. Why would anyone else take her?”

  “Actually,” D’Jenn said, “there may be a reason.”

  “What do you mean?” Dormael asked, shooting his cousin a sharp look.

  “It’s why I came to find you in the first place,” D’Jenn said. He made a sharp gesture in the air, and Dormael felt his cousin’s Kai reach out into the room, sealing it away from eavesdroppers. “I had a bug in my hair about something today, so I went to try and dig it out.”

  “A bug about what?” Allen asked.

  “Kitamin Jurillic,” D’Jenn said, “and his miraculous rescue.”

  “You mean that story my Pop told you?” Dormael asked. “Was the old man on to something for once?” He didn’t see what in the Six Hells this had to do with Bethany, but he waited his cousin out. D’Jenn wouldn’t say anything that wasn’t worth the effort.

  “He’s not as stupid as all that,” Allen said. “The old man is on to a lot of things.”

  “He certainly was this time,” D’Jenn nodded. “Something about our conversation with Victus bothered me all day. The thing your father had said about Kitamin Jurillic—that someone powerful had been behind his rescue—kept nagging at me. I knew only one person with the kind of power to affect a rescue operation good enough to remove someone from Rashardian slavers.”

  “This is what you meant when you said he’s been using us,” Dormael said.

  “Aye,” D’Jenn nodded. “Victus had him rescued, Dormael. What’s more, he’s been buying up influence on the Council of Seven. Nyra Jurillic even believed he was murdering people, or she alluded to it, anyway. I don’t know what the money is for, yet—I still don’t have all the pieces—but I know one thing. Victus Tiranan is a traitor, and we cannot trust him. Jurillic said that she could see his hand in the Council Meetings. He’s deep into something, some operation he’s been planning. I know the way his mind works, Dormael. This isn’t good. I can feel it.”

  Dormael took a moment to soak it all in. He knew his mentor had lied during their debriefing, he and D’Jenn had shared their suspicions of him. Victus as a traitor was hard to imagine, but D’Jenn had never led him down the wrong path.

  “What would he have to gain?” Dormael asked. “Let’s say that he moves some pieces around on the board, gets elected Mekai. What then? The Mekai serves only an advisory position. If he reached for real power, then all the Sevenlands would turn against him. Wizards are forbidden the leadership of tribe, clan, or family—this is one of our oldest laws.”

  “He doesn’t need to be the figurehead,” D’Jenn said. “Think about it. Victus has spent an entire generation grooming a crop of Warlocks, selecting the wizards he wanted to train specifically for the characteristics he valued. He oversaw every step of the training, adopted the lot of us into his care.”

  “He’s like a father to all of us,” Dormael said, a cold spear of realization twisting in his chest.

  D’Jenn nodded. “He says it all the time—we’re a family. If he’s Mekai, he might as well be choosing the next deacon outright. Anyone who is elected to the position will be one of his disciples—as are we all.”

  “Any operation he wanted to push, he would get it,” Dormael said, the realizations sliding into place. “He could sit at the center of a spider’s web, and pull strings that reached across the world. He’d have his own personal army of Warlocks.”

  “That sounds terrifying,” Shawna said. Dormael nodded in agreement.

  “He’d still be breaking the old edicts,” Allen said. “He’d just be hiding it.”

  “Still—why would he come after Bethany?” Dormael asked.

  “He said it outright,” D’Jenn said. “She could be the most powerful wizard the Conclave has seen in generations. He wants to train her as a Warlock. Now that I’ve realized what he’s done, I can see the the reasons behind the moves he has made. Bethany represents power, and he needs to gather as much of it to his side as possible. You heard what he asked us in the War Room.”

  “If we would do what was right when time comes,” Dormael said, the words now settling into his stomach like bricks, one by one. “He may as well have said it to us.”

  “He wants us on his side,” D’Jenn said. “He’s planning something, Dormael. I don’t know if he has Bethany, but if he doesn’t, then we need to find her first.”

  “Agreed. Let’s go, then,” Dormael growled.

  “I’ll check the dining hall,” Allen said, “see if anyone has seen her stealing food. The girl can eat like three grown men. I’ll come back here if I find her.”

  “Be careful,” Dormael said. “We don’t know whom we can trust.”

  Allen nodded, checked the axe at his hip, and ducked into the hallway.

  “I’ll check the grounds—on this side of the river, and the west side. Maybe she hid out the storm in one of the greenhouses, or ducked into a garden,” D’Jenn said. Dormael nodded, and his cousin disappeared through the door on Allen’s heels.

  Shawna lowered herself to sit on the bench next to him. He gave her a wan smile, and she placed a warm, comforting hand over his. Dormael paused a moment, the energy fleeing from him in the face of all that had happened. The day weighed on him like a load of bricks.

  “Where should we search?” Shawna asked. The question jolted him from his reverie.

  “I’m going to search through the Conclave Proper, see if I can pick up something with my Kai—a trace of her magic, perhaps, or a sense of her consciousness. If she’s using her magic, maybe I’ll be able to hear it,” he said. “I’ll be immobile. Would you mind standing guard over me? After what happened today—”

  “Sure,” she said, saving him from having to go on. “I’ll be right here. What should I do if someone we don’t trust comes through that door? How bad have things gotten?”

  “Just wake me,” Dormael said. “Hopefully they’re not so bad that we’d have to worry about violence in my very apartments. If someone comes in, scowl at them and grumble about disturbing the wizard during his studies.”

  “You want me to act like your bodyguard?” Shawna asked, a laugh escaping despite the grim situation. “You’re mad, Dormael Harlun. I’ll do it, though. You’re lucky I like you.”

  Dormael gave her as genuine a smile as he could muster, then crawled onto the floor. He sat cross-legged, straightening his back and taking deep breaths. Shawna paced across the floor, hands planted on her shapely hips. Dormael gave her one last nod, then closed his eyes.

  He floated through the hallways of the Conclave Proper, his Kai bringing him the world in harmonious tones as he passed through it. The world was a beach, each sandy pebble a tiny bell, and each bell ringing its own unique note as his consciousness rushed by. He could feel a storm of noise and impressi
ons, deep rhythmic beats felt in his chest, and bright flashes of song as other wizards used their gifts.

  The Conclave was as chaotic a place as one could find through the lens of a wizard’s Kai.

  Dormael flashed down the hallways of residential quarters, listening for the resonance of Bethany’s song. He floated down winding stairs, through bustling kitchens, past teams of servants who cleaned in an almost hypnotic pattern, and flitted between clouds of noisy conversation. Bethany was nowhere, and had been nowhere. Dormael grew worried as he searched floor by floor, finding an abundance of nothing.

  Then, he came to the Common Hall, on the ground floor of the Conclave Proper.

  There was a buzz—an excited, dreadful quality to the energy in the room that caught his attention. It whipped through the air in the hall like ghostly lightning, originating from somewhere just past the common areas, toward the official chambers where petitioners came to plead their cases. Dormael sent his awareness toward the confusion, following it to its source.

  In back of the Common Hall, there were a series of offices where representatives of the different Disciplines met with the public. The Hedge Wizards, Philosophers, and Scouts all had offices. The Warlocks, of course, had no office. All day, petitioners would fill the hallway, waiting in every corner of the room at their chance to sit before a desk in one of those bland little offices. The crush of bodies in the Common Hall every day was a challenge for the Conclave staff to deal with, and created a mess of problems on its own.

  Sometime during the Conclave’s past, the wizards had seen fit to fix this problem by creating a network of staircases and passageways that would keep servants and Initiates from having to dodge through the press of the Common Hall to see to their duties. These passages—only wide enough for two—criss-crossed between rooms, floors, and buildings. Some of them even went down into the tunnels beneath the Conclave, down to the archives and the Crux. Some mysterious, long-standing tradition had named those passageways the Rat Holes. No one had bothered to change it in hundreds of years, as far as Dormael knew.

  Around the entrance to one of the Rat Holes, there was a commotion. A few dozen people crowded near the entrance to the corridor, trying to get a look down a winding staircase. A pair of scowling wizards held the crowd at bay, calling for ‘manners and good sense’ with the insistence of someone who had been placed in authority. The people obeyed them for the most part, but curiosity was a powerful force. The buzz in the room flickered through his Kai like silent lightning.

  Floating closer, Dormael saw that the entrance to the staircase was warded from magical intrusion as well, with a swirling wall of energy that would trap his mind if he tried to penetrate it. He could not scry past it. Something had definitely happened, and a stone settled into his guts.

  Dormael withdrew his senses back into his own body, and jumped up from the floor.

  “Did you find her?” Shawna asked, sensing his urgency.

  “No,” Dormael said, shaking his head, “but I found something. It may or may not have something to do with her, but it’s the only lead we have right now. Come on, we’re going down to the Common Hall. Bring your swords?”

  Shawna gave him a fierce smile, and snatched her blades from his table.

  **

  Bethany stared at the pair of footprints trailing through the dust of the corridor, trying to decide what to do. She had no idea how to tell anything from the prints, save that someone had come this way. Were they friends of the man she had encountered in the tunnels? There was no telling how long ago they had come down the corridor, but Bethany had heard nothing but her own breathing for what felt like hours.

  To follow, or not?

  She might be walking right into the hands of her enemies. There might be another man waiting around the corner of a distant corridor, magic poised for an attack. Maybe they would chase her back into the darkness if they found her, and she’d never find her way out. The runes glowed warm, amber light into the hallway, humming against her Kai like a pleasant tune. They seemed to await her decision.

  The prints were big people, and that was what decided her. Big people never knew where to look, and if Bethany was careful, she was sure that they couldn’t catch her this time. She would make sure that she was more watchful. If nothing else, she could hang back in the shadows, and follow whomever was down here to safety.

  The glowing runes, though, presented a problem. They lit up as she came down the hallway, warming like a fire coaxed to life, and faded as she passed by. The runes would announce her as surely as a herald—but they were the only thing holding the darkness at bay. Narrowing her eyes, Bethany stared at the curving metal lines laid into the stone.

  “I need you to be quiet now,” she whispered. Bethany wasn’t sure how she did it, but she could feel the magic moving into the link with the runes. She pulled power from it, decreasing the volume of her own magic, until her Kai’s song was just above a whisper. The runes, in response, faded to a subdued glow. It took her eyes a moment to adjust, but once she had closed them and counted to seven—a trick for saving her night-vision that Dormael had taught her—there was plenty of light by which to see.

  “Pirate-Queen of the Seas,” she whispered with a smile.

  The footprints meandered down the corridor, turned right, wandered down that hallway, then onto a winding staircase that led deeper into the tunnels. Bethany hesitated only a moment, making sure the glowing runes continued on the lower level, and followed the trail the footprints left for her. Bethany took her slippers off and stuffed them into her belt—they were stupid, girly things that Dormael forced her to wear, anyway. In her bare feet, she could almost run over the smooth stone underfoot without making a sound. The slippers squeaked and scuffed and made all kinds of noise. The hard stone was chilly on the soles of her feet, but she relished in the freedom. Taking her shoes off always made her want to run.

  She followed the footsteps for another eternity, taking winding turns and heading ever deeper into the ground. Her Kai sang to her in a low hum, and she could tell by the sound of the earth around her that she was much farther underground than she had ever been. The weight of dirt pressing against the stone felt like weight on her own shoulders, though she knew she couldn’t really feel it—that was some trick of her magic.

  As she went deeper, though, there was something else.

  At first Bethany didn’t know what to make of the sound. It was like a heartbeat, or breathing. She could feel energy in these corridors, invisible veins of magical pressure pulsing through the hallways, humming with the very stone of the Conclave tunnels. Bethany felt like she had been swallowed by some great lizard, and she was running down its throat, listening to its breathing.

  The farther she went down the passageway, the more energy she could feel. Her Kai resonated with it, reached out and touched it in some childlike manner. Bethany felt a tingle of excitement every time it did so, as if she was tapped into a river of starlight. She had to suppress the urge to laugh and skip as she moved down the hallway, following the river of magic. The runes followed her, their subdued glow humming in her senses.

  When she reached the next level down, the air was so charged with power that it buzzed against her skin. Something was gathering magic to itself, something deep within the tunnels. She could feel it pulling at her Kai, beckoning her power to dance with it. It was tempting, like an itch that needed scratching, but Bethany kept her magic to herself. Something told her that she didn’t want to be caught up in it.

  Lines of silver were laid into the floor on this level, and she could feel them humming with the spell in the distant part of the tunnels, as if they were a part of it. Bethany was careful not to touch the curving, concentric lines of silver, nor the runes that were scrawled over the floor between them. Some of the glyphs were as tall as she was, and all of it was vibrating with magical energy. She stepped over the metal, keeping her bare feet on the stone.

  As she moved farther down the tunnel, a new sound began t
o emerge.

  An alien, crooning song flitted through the corridor, a ghostly echo resonating with her Kai. Bethany froze when she heard it, and drew her magic in close. The runes that been lighting her way in subdued tones waned to the whisper of an afterglow.

  It was the fiega—Shawna’s armlet.

  Despite her efforts to hide, the armlet knew she was there. She could feel it in the tone of its song, the recognition it sang with, the warmth it tried to show her. Bethany wanted to brush it away—after all, the last time she’d listened to it, very bad things happened—but it was insistent. It had sent her dream after dream in the days following the fight at sea, though she had declined to tell Dormael or D’Jenn. They were never more than scattered pictures and impressions, anyway, and Bethany didn’t think they meant much of anything.

  The thing was lonely. Bethany wasn’t sure how she could tell. It was like the way that lies sounded different to her ears, or the way she knew what her Kai sounded like—some things a person just knew. That was why the armlet was so rough with everyone. It was like a puppy, too big to know that its tail knocked over everything in the room every time it wanted to play.

  Bethany wasn’t supposed to talk to it. She was forbidden to listen to it, and she was under strict instruction never to reach out to the thing with her magic. You know what happened last time, she could almost hear Dormael saying to her. Don’t do anything too stupid to fix.

  Before she could stop it, though, it reached out to her. Before she could stop herself, she reached back.

  The whole cabin vibrated with her fear, the door slamming shut against the frame, the wood creaking around her. She could feel the storm in her chest, a constant resonance with the thunder that cracked the skies, and churned the seas they rode to chaos. The song of the armlet crooned from its place in their bags, calming her magic from the storm of fear it had become.