by Julia Knight
A group of grubby children sat by the window, playing with the chimes, making them tinkle dischordantly. A woman, so like Esti they had to be sisters, plonked a bowl of something in front of Vocho with a cryptic look before turning back to the range. He hesitated–he’d been caught out once before, when they’d first arrived, and he’d been given something he thought was fantastic until told what it was. Blood sausage with added things that he hadn’t noticed until they moved in his mouth. They’d said you knew it’d gone off when the maggots were dead. He hadn’t been able to puke fast enough. He peered myopically at his bowl, poked it to see if there were any legs that looked like they were attached to anything alive, caught a disapproving look from the sister and picked up a spoon. Even through the fug of whatever Esti had given him, he knew that she was his best chance of getting rid of the tattoo, and Sabates’ hold on him. Much as he wanted to, offending them by not eating would be a mistake.
The older children squawked when Esti began shooing them out, but calmed when she said they could come back for dinner. They scooted off, yelling something about last one to the docks was a ninny, which made Vocho smile. That still left four children, two babes in arms and two toddlers, one of which was happily on Cospel’s lap playing with his buttons. The other sat on a rug by the range and stared up at Vocho in silence. He tried not to look at it–him, it was a boy–because children were an unknown quantity. He was aware they existed, he just wasn’t sure what you actually did with them. Which meant that when the child crawled across the rug and tried to pull himself up Vocho’s leg, he almost dropped the bowl.
“Sorry about that.” Esti picked up the toddler and handed him to her sister. “Hazard of the job.”
“Of being a magician? You get infested with children?”
She laughed and some of the tension left. “No, being the daughter of sailors. We end up looking after children whose parents are both at sea or who only have one parent, and that one is abroad. It’s us or the orphanage, so it’s usually us.”
They both seemed determined not to talk about what was on his back, and Vocho was more than happy with that. Despite the effects of whatever she’d given him it was tingling like a bastard, and he’d rather not know what that meant.
Esti gave her sister a meaningful look, and the children were rounded up and taken for “a nice nap” in another room. Esti sat at the table, spread her hands over the tablecloth and cast a supplicating glance at the chimes over the window.
“How much do you know about magicians, either of you?”
Vocho and Cospel shared a look.
“Not much,” Vocho said. “They’re illegal in Reyes, and good riddance. Blood and bastards, that’s all I know. Er… present company excepted, of course.”
“Huh. Well, you don’t know the half of it then. Just enough to get you into trouble. Which you have done. In style, I might add.”
Vocho almost preened at that, until he realised it wasn’t a compliment.
“Look,” she said. “Magicians aren’t all maniacs out to drain the blood of virgins, or even not-virgins. A load of old hokey, that is, at least in part, exaggerated to scare people. Magic does do funny things to people after a while, makes them all dark inside. It sucks you out and replaces you with someone else if you’re not careful. But we hardly ever use human blood. Well, most of us don’t. It’s not forbidden, but it isn’t usual. Except in certain cases or for certain things. But Sabates…” She broke off and shook her head.
“Is completely deluded,” Kass said from the doorway, before she sauntered over and plonked herself down at the table, a familiar set of papers in front of her with Petri’s now broken seal.
Kacha drummed her fingers on the papers and watched Vocho carefully. It had taken a long internal tussle before she’d decided that not reading what Petri had sent would be stupid.
She thought she was prepared for the excuses, the possible lies, had hardened herself, but he’d caught her off guard, again. How did he always do that? She put that one away for later, because there were more pressing things to worry about. The piece of paper inside the Clockwork God was the least of their worries now.
Vocho was pretending to look unconcerned but he must be losing his touch because his leg was jiggling and he kept squirming his shoulders.
“Did you get rid of it?” Kacha asked.
“Not exactly,” Esti said before Vocho could speak. “Sabates is a crafty one, and strong too. Besides, something’s happening with it.”
“What?” A shaft of anxiety stabbed through Kacha’s gut.
Esti’s face scrunched up. “I don’t know exactly, it’s not really my thing, you know? I do a bit of healing and midwifery–all I can do now, without giving myself away. But even before I was more into the making side rather than the, well, the other side, like Sabates.”
Vocho’s spoon dropped into his bowl, and he turned a strange shade of grey. “And what does that mean, exactly?”
Esti eyed the pair of them as though weighing up what and what not to tell them before, with a surreptitious glance at the window, she said, “Magic is–do you know what it is? I doubt it. No one really does, although many have tried to pin it down. But like a butterfly, when you pin it, it dies. I can tell you this though–anyone can learn it if they can do one thing. And that one thing is to be aware on an–what’s the word? Oh yes! On an emotional level of who and what is around you, always. You feel things, here.” She thumped her chest. “Sounds stupid, I know, but that’s the only way to describe it. Nothing solid, just a little twinge of feeling, and that’s the basis of it all. Of course, just because you can feel things around you doesn’t mean you like them or are a nice person. Sometimes it makes it easier for you to torture them, because you know exactly where to hurt them.”
“And Sabates is—”
“No, that’s the point. Or he never used to be. He was always a very powerful magician, but of course the more powerful tend to be also more, well, sensitive is perhaps the word. Your revolution, Bakar taking power, purging the magicians… Things changed in Ikaras, in the university, just as they did in Reyes. More subtly perhaps. Refugees turning up, not many but some. Sabates’ son dying in Reyes, that changed him all right. Changed the whole magical arm of the university, a magician dying like that, murdered. No one had ever dared before. The magicians got scared, I think, pulled back, pulled themselves in. We closed ranks, didn’t accept any new members except one. Sabates withdrew to his room as soon as we heard about his son, kept himself there in the dark for weeks. Then she came. Alicia that is. Came from Reyes, I reckon, though she never said. Never said much at all those first few weeks, and she was too old to start the training, but she offered Sabates something. I don’t know what or how she got to him, but he took her in. And she was good, I’ll give her that. Never said much back then, but by the gods she listened. She learned too, quicker than anyone I ever met. I was pretty young at the time, seven or eight, and I’d been training a year or more by then. She must have been eighteen or so. Others had been training for ten years by the time they were that age, but she caught them up in less than a year. Then she started pestering Sabates to show her more–different things, darker things. He was dark himself by then, dark inside, you know? So was she, always was, I think, and the magic eats away at that and makes it worse, twists it all up inside. We felt sorry for her to start with–thought she’d suffered under the revolt or lost someone, something like that–but there was always something sort of… dark and red at her centre. That’s the best I can describe it.”
“What’s all that got to do with me?” Vocho said. “Sabates is deluded or deranged. Got it. Alicia is his apprentice. Check. We knew all that, if not the details. Now, how are you going to get this thing off me?”
“Well, if she’s about, you could be in deep shit. She’s not a pleasant person to cross.”
Kacha took the opportunity of getting a word in. “She’s already here, I think.” The look on their faces was at least partly satisfyi
ng, and now she had their attention, she carried on. “Petri, he, well he says lots of things here.”
“I just bet he does,” Vocho muttered under his breath, though he shut up when Kacha glared at him.
“One of which is that Sabates and Licio are on their way. I checked at the Mouth of Ikaras and it looks like Dom’s right. And Alicia’s already here, Petri thinks.”
“So?”
“So, you plank, we already screwed them up once. Sabates isn’t the forgiving kind and he wants to make sure we aren’t around to screw him over again while he’s ‘negotiating’. They’re looking for us, Voch. Sabates knew we were here, though I think he only just found out. And Alicia or someone has got the king to offer a reward for any ‘Reyen spies’. We can’t go back to Reyes openly because—” She shot Esti a glance. “Because. And we can’t stay here. The way I see it, all we can do is try to convince the prelate that Licio’s planning to kill him, and somehow manage to do that without getting arrested. Or anyone finding us through that thing on your back.”
“Bugger.”
“Exactly.”
They sat in silence for a while, before Kacha said, “There is one thing we can use to help, one piece of evidence I left behind. Gave it to the Clockwork God–and don’t look at me like that. One of the papers from the chest, but we daren’t go anywhere right now because they’ll know where we are. The tattoo, that’s first. Get rid of that and we have a lot more options.”
“That’s easier said than done, apparently.” Vocho slumped as if whatever Esti had done to him had sucked everything out of him.
Strangely it annoyed the crap out of Kacha when he was all ego, but life was only right somehow when Vocho was grandstanding and boasting and generally being a dick.
Esti looked thoughtfully between the two of them, took another look at the chimes at the window and then a deep breath. “I can stop them being able to track you at least. Do you think you could get into the university?”
Chapter Six
It had sounded so easy, but Vocho was coming to appreciate the subtleties of the defences around Ikaras University, in particular the mages’ quarters. If appreciate meant lose blood over. He swore viciously under his breath, sucked the blood from his fingers and for the hundredth time reminded himself why he was here.
The lock was proving to be something of a trial, to put it mildly. When they’d decided on this frankly ridiculous plan he’d thought it would just be a matter of over the walls to avoid the university guards, who let no one in without a pass signed in duplicate by the deacon and the chief archivist, then a quick lock or two, get what they came for and away. Simple for a man of his distinction and talent, or should be. But it wasn’t the main part of the university they needed to get into; it was the magical section, which made Vocho all sweaty just thinking about it. It also made getting in that much trickier.
“Voch,” Kacha whispered behind him, “I think you might want to hurry up.”
“Hey, you can’t rush perfection.”
“I would if I could see any. But there’s people coming and I don’t like the look of their gloves.”
Not a phrase to instil dread in anyone’s heart except in Ikaras.
He hurried up. The lock pick slid in his sweating hand, and something went click inside. It didn’t sound like a very friendly click either. It sounded more like–“Duck!”
Vocho threw himself behind a nearby wall, and Kass all but fell on top of him. Something whizzed out of a suddenly open aperture above the lock, through the air right where his head had been and thunked against the stone the other side of the broad alley, bringing big fat sparks and a wailing screech that would wake the dead. The screech didn’t stop when the axe blade did either–it carried on, the noise spiralling louder and louder until Vocho could see spots in front of his eyes. Kass said something, which was thankfully drowned out by the noise. He was pretty sure it wouldn’t be complimentary.
She yanked him to his feet and with a quick look around they hared out of the alley, through a series of moving shadows conjured by the array of lights coming from the university and into the gardens at the centre of the main quadrangle, where Cospel and Esti were waiting for them.
“Went as well as could be expected then?” Cospel said.
“Pretty much,” Vocho gasped from where he was bent over, hands on knees, trying to get his breath back.
Kass flopped down next to him, keeping a wary eye out through the bushes and trees. The quadrangle was suddenly full of people–students mostly by the look of them, young and rumpled from their beds. There were a few who looked a shade more noteworthy–older, wiser heads, professors maybe. Vocho recognised one from their endless reconnoitring. Coming from every corner, jangling in their bronze armour, a dozen guards headed towards the building they’d just left and servants galore ran to and fro, some shouting orders that everyone else seemed to ignore. Worse were a man and a woman who strolled through the mayhem like it was a picnic. Even the half-asleep students hurried to move out of their way when they noticed the way the shadows and light played across their faces, robes and most importantly their gloves.
Vocho had never been quite so breeches-soilingly scared of any piece of clothing before. “This was a bloody stupid idea,” he whispered.
“Well, it was yours,” Kass replied. “And we’re here now. How else are we going to get that thing off your back? Ahh, shit.”
Vocho whipped around to see where she was looking, peering through a set of thickly leafed branches. Shit indeed. The two mages had stopped and were peering very intently at the bushes.
“You don’t suppose they can see the tattoo, do you?” Kass mouthed.
Vocho tried very hard not to suppose that. If it was true, they were sunk, but they had no real knowledge of what magic could do except be a pain in the behind and make you do things you didn’t want to.
“Probably not,” Esti whispered, and Vocho breathed a sigh of relief, “but I can’t guarantee it,” she continued, which made him suck it right back in again.
“Is there another way in? There must be, surely?” Cospel asked. “Place as big and old as this, I expect they’ve got a half-dozen ways in and secret tunnels too.”
Esti shrugged. “I’m not sure. I never really needed to know because I always went in the front door. But perhaps through the kitchens? It’s a long way around, but the back of the magicians’ buildings butt up to the main kitchens, I think. I’m sure I remember a door there somewhere.”
“There you are then, Cospel,” Vocho said. “Off you go.”
Cospel huffed and muttered under his breath but he knew his role well enough. He messed up his shirt and hair and stepped out of the bushes, fiddling with the ties on his breeches as though fumbling to do them up, and ended up right in front of the mages, whereupon he burped hugely.
“Beg pardon, I’m sure.” Vocho winced at Cospel’s accent, but to be fair it was better than his and Kass’s put together.
“What in hells were you doing in…” the male mage began, until Cospel started rooting around in his breeches like he was trying to rearrange himself. “No, don’t answer that. Gods’ sakes, man, you don’t piss in the deacon’s bushes!”
Cospel moved around subtly so that the mages were facing the university not the bushes and who was hiding in them. “Oh, those are his? My apologies, I’m sure. Only just got here, see, and got caught short. An old war wound, it is, makes me have to go something terrible. I’m supposed to report to the kitchens.”
The woman looked him up and down. “Well, that explains your ridiculous accent. It’s that way, and make sure you wash your hands before you touch anything!”
“Yes, ma’am.” Cospel bobbed up and down like a nervous housemaid. “Thank you, ma’am. And thank you for not frying me alive, ma’am. Much appreciated.”
The male smiled condescendingly. “Lucky for you no one can stand the deacon or his stupid garden. Go on, sod off before I change my mind and have your blood.”
Cospel hurried off in the direction of the main university building looming above them, subtly lit from within so that shadows became darker among the bushes, but it’d be easy enough to spot Vocho and Kacha if anyone was trying.
The mages didn’t hang about, but went off towards the area that Vocho and Kacha had just vacated so hurriedly.
“Stupid bloody idea,” Kass muttered again as she watched them go.
It was too, but while they’d argued for hours about the best way to get into the university and that tattoo off his back, none of them had managed to think of anything better. For some reason Esti was either unwilling to just walk in or, more likely to Vocho’s mind, unable to, though at least she knew what they were looking for and where they were likely to find it.
Magicians kept records, she’d said. Reams and reams of records–of who invented what procedure, how they were performed, whether eyes of newts or tongues of dogs were required, that sort of thing, along with possibly how to reverse the spells. All the most powerful ones were written in an ancient red book that dated back hundreds of years, it seemed, locked up somewhere in the magicians’ buildings. Surrounded by magicians. And magical locks. And gods knew what else. Three-headed dogs, probably. The only problem was, she wasn’t sure exactly where the head mage kept the bloody thing because magicians were secretive bastards, or words to that effect.
Cospel, bless the scoundrel’s devious heart, had managed to find and bribe an ancient magical archivist with a lot of booze and flattery, and had squeezed out of his sozzled brain where the safe was–in the head mage’s office, set into the floor under the rug–and that the combination involved at least two number threes and a five.