by Julia Knight
She looked up as Vocho opened the door wider and lifted his sword, though he had no real intention of using it. Until he saw her hands, anyway. Dark marks wriggled across her fingers, over her knuckles, up onto her wrists. The marks resolved into pictures. Long vines, intricate flowers, a sapling bending in the wind. He dragged his eyes away–he’d been caught that way before, and never again–and lifted the sword with more purpose.
Kass came in behind him, and she and the woman behind the desk both swore at roughly the same time as Vocho realised it was Esti.
She recovered quickly enough: leaped out of the chair and put her back to the wall, her hands out in front of her. The vines and flowers became thorns.
“You just stay there,” she said. “Stay there and I won’t do anything rash.”
He stepped forward till he was up against the desk, gave the sword a flashy twirl that had the tip whip across an inch from her nose, and put on his best show-off smile. He didn’t even get the chance to say something witty.
“I can explain,” she said in a rush. “I never thought you’d get this far.”
“You thought we’d die, you mean? Handily tying up all the guards so you could get whatever it is you’re looking for.”
Kass came up on his flank, blades at the ready. She had almost as much cause to be wary of magicians as he did. If Esti blinked wrong, he was going to make sure she couldn’t cast any spells. Now or for ever.
“Yes! Well, maybe.” Esti lowered her hands. “But you said you were good, so I thought you’d be fine and perhaps, you know, just to make sure… Did you get rid of all the guards?”
Kacha turned her head at a noise from the corridor. “No, and here they are.”
Just when it had all been going so well too. Vocho couldn’t decide which way to go, who to poke with his sword–the magician in front of him or the guards that had just reached the doorway behind him.
He’d just decided on Esti–he was never going to stop hating magicians, especially ones that were devious, and besides Kacha had turned to deal with the guards–when Esti burst into action. A scalpel appeared from nowhere, and even before Vocho could flinch she’d slashed a line down her own arm and blood ran freely. A great cracking sound from the doorway made Vocho turn despite himself. For some reason, a tree was growing there, with long twining branches full of thorns, tangling up the guards and drawing more blood from them. More trees sprang up in its shade, coiling through the first, inextricably trapping the two lead guards, whose muffled curses echoed around the room.
A neat trick. When he turned back, Esti was halfway out of the window.
“Hey!” he shouted after her.
“Never mind her,” Kacha said. “Let’s find the bloody book and get out of here. Even if we can’t get her to use it, maybe we can find another magician.”
“Now that’s a plan I can get behind.”
She rifled through the already messed-up drawers to see what Esti had been after while Vocho dragged up the rug from the floor and found the safe. Three-number combo, and hadn’t the archivist said two threes and a five?
“Voch, you want to get a move on? Only I’m pretty sure there’s a magician the other side of that tree now.”
“I’m hurrying, I’m hurrying!” There were only a few ways this could go, and he’d tried them all. The safe refused to open.
He glanced up at Kass. She had her sword in one hand and a drawer in the other, which she flipped over, spilling pens everywhere. God’s cogs, yes. A previous employer had once the ‘brilliant’ idea of writing his combo on the bottom of the drawer, which, while not the first place any decent safe-cracker would look, was certainly not the last.
“Four six four,” she said.
“Cheeky bugger lied to us,” Vocho muttered and spun the lock. Click.
Too late he recalled that this was a magician’s safe. He recalled at about the time he scraped himself off the wall, head ringing and eyes blurred. Kass, with perhaps more sense, had ducked behind the desk and missed the worst of it. Vocho staggered to his feet, pulled himself together at the sound of guards getting altogether too close to getting in, and counted himself thankful no bones appeared to be broken.
The contents of the safe, after all that, were a disappointment. While there were some interesting-looking books with risqué woodcuts that presumably Sabates didn’t share with anyone, he found nothing like what they were looking for. Nothing bound in red, nothing that looked very old.
All the while the guards were hacking away at the instant forest, and there was a distinct smell of cooking blood.
“Shit,” Kacha said when she looked in the safe. “Come on. We need to get going before they get through.”
“There must be something.” Had to be or why would Esti have risked all this?
“If there is, we haven’t got time to find it. Come on!”
Only there was. Under the woodcuts lay a small brown book full of tiny writing that Vocho couldn’t read and a sheaf of papers with some complicated-looking plans on them. He shoved it all into his tunic and followed Kass.
Esti had left the chair under the window, and within moments the two of them had climbed out and dropped onto a small lawn surrounded on all sides by a path and then blank-faced buildings. Only one door broke the glass surfaces, and they headed for it as fast as they could. By the sounds of it, not a moment too soon. A crossbow bolt skipped past Kacha’s head and through a pane of glass ahead, which shattered in a shower of blue and green shards.
They made it through the door with no idea what they’d find on the other side and slammed it shut behind them. What they found in the corridor beyond was Esti, leaning against the wall with a twisted look on her face, and some guards advancing warily.
Vocho didn’t stop to think–he rarely did–but rushed the guards, who pulled up short, just for a moment. Long enough for Kacha to join him and hiss something at Esti.
The lead guard hefted a short spear that looked more ceremonial than anything else, a heavy palla blade in the other hand. At least only one of his companions had a clockwork gun, which was a relief. Vocho leaped in, took out the gunman first and whirled on the leader. Out of the corner of his eye he could see Kacha holding her own against two more.
It wasn’t fair really. He and Kass had spent a couple of decades training at the duellists’ guild, and by the look of it these men had received a few weeks training in the park and a spear. Ikaras was known as a peaceful city, so no doubt no one ever expected them to have to do much.
Sad for them, but Vocho went a bit easy because of it. Only one gave him much trouble, the leader, who was a crafty bastard. The palla was a weapon Vocho was learning to loathe. It had no art to it, just sheer chopping power. Half his fancy moves were so much dust before it.
The man feinted left then aimed for Vocho’s groin with the short spear. Vocho knocked it away with inches to spare, dodged an overhanded blow from the palla, and had just enough space and time for a slash to the man’s face that missed but pulled him up short. They circled briefly, both unsure of the other’s weapons. The man came, double-handed again. The spear was ineffective held in only one hand, but it’d be enough if it caught him. In the end the weakness of the palla–no defence, just all-out brute attack–told as Vocho swerved away and used the greater reach of his sword to its best effect, got in under the man’s guard and took out the spear arm. After that, he didn’t last long before he was a pile of groaning on the floor. Vocho had to wonder at the laxness of the security. If they’d known how bad it was, they would have just walked in.
When he turned, Kacha was bending over Esti.
“Don’t get too close,” he said. He didn’t like the look of the markings on her hands, thorns like daggers. “You never know what they’ll do, and she’s already lied to us.”
Kacha got Esti up. It was clear she’d hurt her leg somehow, possibly in the drop from the window. “She’s the only bloody hope we’ve got, Voch.”
“If she doesn’t do anythi
ng to us,” Vocho muttered. The tattoo on his back was itching like crazy, and looking at the magician just made it worse, made all the shadowy memories come back. “Or make us do anything.”
“I won’t, I promise!” Esti said. “You help me out of here, and I’ll help you with whatever you want. I really will.”
The woman looked pleadingly at Vocho as the echoes of more running feet came to them.
“I’ll take the tattoo off, for free.”
Vocho would do almost anything for that.
“All right. But if you try anything, you’ll regret it. Now let’s get out of here.”
Chapter Seven
Kacha helped Esti up the steps to her house. Vocho was being a right arse, but she supposed she couldn’t blame him. Esti clearly had plans of her own, ones she hadn’t bothered to share with Vocho and Kacha. She’d used them and lied to them. But she’d done nothing that either of them wouldn’t have done themselves. Hells, they’d sent Cospel off with guards on his tail armed with nothing but a knife, though they’d found him safe and well–the man could get out of a bear trap if he had a mind, Kacha often thought. Esti hadn’t done any worse than they had, if you thought about it. Besides, Kacha thought she had been telling the truth about some things. Thrown out of the magicians’ little cabal, just as she and Vocho had been thrown out of their guild. Kacha was at least prepared to hear what she had to say.
Esti’s house was small and dank under its coating of vines. Esti got herself to a stool by the mean little fireplace in the front room and shuffled onto it. Her leg was swollen but not purple. She’d probably be able to walk on it in a day or two. Vocho came in like a bad cloud behind them and rounded on her.
“So, what was that all about? No, you keep your hands in those gloves and where I can see them. You tell us about some big red book you want, that can help me, but basically you were using us to get what you wanted. Did you get it? Because there was no red book. I did, however, find this.” He slapped the little brown book on a table, along with the plans for what looked like a clockwork heart. “And I can’t read Ikaran, but I can read your name clear enough on the front of that book. So you start telling me what’s really going on here and maybe this room won’t end up with a whole lot of blood in it.”
Esti glowered up at him from under her fringe, but soon sighed and relaxed her shoulders. “I suppose that’s fair enough. I was desperate, all right? Sabates had me thrown out of the university, and he was blackmailing me too. Using that book, among other things. Did you see what else was in the safe?”
“Well there were these plans and some, um, interesting woodcuts. Oh, I see. I think. My word. And sideways too. Gosh, how acrobatic.” Some of the anger leached out of Vocho, though it still bubbled underneath. He was never going to like a magician. “But what does that have to do with me and Kass? And can you actually help me or not?”
Esti blushed and wouldn’t look at either of them. “I needed money to get away from him, as far as I can because he can reach a long way. He always wants me to do things for him! He won’t let me say no. And there’s quite a big reward for Reyen spies, in case you hadn’t noticed. I don’t earn any money, or not much. I’m not in the university any more. If I use more than the smallest bit of magic other than what he gets me to do, Alicia’ll find out where I am and then, well, and then it’s the dungeons. The ones under the Mouth. If I’m lucky. And I’ve got my sister to think about, my brother, the children. I had to get these things back so he’d stop blackmailing me.”
“And you used us to do it?” Vocho, usually so blasé, was looking anything but as he kicked at a table.
“You’re using me too, aren’t you? Who else do you think would take off that tattoo without reporting you to the king’s men? Or worse, the magicians. Or do it so cheaply? You wanted my help, and this is my price.”
She picked up the book and opened it. “This is everything. All my notes, my charms, my spells. Everything–it’s my whole life. This book can get that tattoo off your back.”
Vocho strode forward as though he was about to wrench the book from her hands. Kacha had never seen him like this before. Vocho wasn’t an angry sort of person, usually being too busy showing off, but that tattoo had done strange things to her brother. Esti held her ground with an icy stare and he stopped at the last second. She looked to Kacha, but she wouldn’t find much help there–she was almost as wary of magicians as Vocho.
“What do you need?” Esti said at last. “If I help you, take that tattoo off for starters, will you promise I can keep the book, and you won’t take me back to Sabates?”
Vocho looked like he was on the verge of grabbing the book anyway, maybe grabbing Esti and giving her a good shake, but this might be their best chance.
“Well, promise might be a bit of a strong word,” Kacha said, ignoring the glare from Vocho. “But we’ll certainly give it a try.”
Petri tried to walk normally, but the temptation to look over his shoulder was almost overwhelming. No doubt about it now, he was being watched. A co-worker, a maid, one of the guards. They were careful about it, mostly, but not careful enough. Maybe there were others who were more careful. But he was sure; wherever he went, someone was watching.
A guard tracked his movements as he took the grand staircase three steps at a time, past the orrery, up into the wide corridor, dim at midnight, that led to Bakar’s rooms. He’d been sent for, again, and the tone of the note didn’t bode well. Metallic disharmony greeted him as he opened the door. Clocks chimed and clicked and ticked and tolled the top of the hour. He gritted his teeth, pasted a smile on his face and went in.
Bakar’s room was black as pitch. Shutters closed, curtains drawn. Old sweat and new fear saturated the room.
“Bakar?”
A light flared in the corner, then bloomed as it was touched to a wick and the glass set in place on a lamp. The glass rattled against its brass base as Bakar put the lamp on a table.
“Petri, you came.”
“Of course.”
“Of course? I suppose. Sit, sit.”
Petri took a chair by the cold fireplace and watched Bakar as he came across the room. The public man projected to the world was gone. In its place was a husk. Dry skin cracked over sunken cheeks; hair that had once been thick and full and dark now wisped around a knobbed forehead. But the eyes–the eyes were as bright as Petri had ever seen them, as bright as the day when Bakar had brought down a king and changed the face of Reyes for ever. Petri had thought then that the man burned. With injustice, with passion. Now that fire had used him up, leaving just the eyes, just the passion, which had now twisted into madness.
Bakar took a seat opposite, his shaking legs almost collapsing him into it.
“Tea.” He waved a bony hand at a tray set on the low table between them. Apple tea, Petri’s favourite. Even as he was, Bakar never forgot little details like that.
Petri poured for them both, though Bakar took none until Petri had sipped and remained alive, unpoisoned.
“I know who it is, you know.” Bakar’s voice was as dry as his skin, but as burning as his eyes. “I know who’s trying to kill me, take Reyes for their own.”
Petri’s cup stopped halfway to his lips before he forced himself to take another swallow. “You do?”
“Oh yes, I think so. I have suspected for a while, in fact, but every man has frailties, flaws. Only the clockwork is perfect. My reading of it was, well, imperfect. My reading of you.”
Petri’s cup rattled in its saucer. Bakar couldn’t know. Couldn’t, not with any certainty. “Me?”
Bakar’s eyes grew ever brighter, seemed the brightest thing in the room until Petri could see the cogs behind them, in Bakar’s head, endlessly whirring. “Trust is my flaw, Petri. Always I trust in my fellow man. But a leader of men cannot trust, not even one he looks on as his own son. The Clockwork God provides.”
He drew out a much folded and battered piece of paper.
“I trust, but men in my employ do not. Th
ere is, in the cellars of this palace, a room where three men work day after day. Sifting through the truths that men and women give to the Clockwork God. Trying to find truths for me. Here is one.”
He opened the paper and smoothed it flat on the table next to the teapot.
“Tell me what it says, Petri Egimont.”
Three words in, and Petri knew what it was. Knew how it ended.
Lord Petri Egimont, Duke of Elona and Master of the Duelling Guild of Reyes.
Written in a fit of idiocy, on a day when he thought both those titles might soon be his. A day he’d betrayed this man.
“Why, Petri?”
What could he say? Nothing that wouldn’t seem self-serving, ungrateful, stupid. He’d betrayed a man he’d looked to as a father for what? For lies. And yet, looking at him now, the insanity glowing behind those burning eyes, knowing what Reyes had recently become under his guidance, he thought he’d do it again.
And perhaps, yes, perhaps he was even lying to himself.
Quiet feet behind him. A faint jingle. There would be a gun, no doubt, tightly wound and pointed at the back of his head.
“Just tell me why, and with who.” Bakar’s sorrowful voice was at odds with the heat of his eyes. “That’s all. Was it Kacha and Vocho? Kacha, no doubt, though I suspect you’ve little liking for her brother. Her, though? You think I didn’t see? Think I didn’t know about you and her? Was that all it was, that you thought you loved the scheming witch?”
Petri forgot whoever was at his back, the gun that was certainly ready to kill him, and shot out of his seat. Another gun, held by a silent man in black who stepped forward from the darkness behind Bakar, pulled him up short.
“Not to worry,” Bakar said. “I know where you sent your little letter. She’ll be dead soon enough. Then perhaps you’ll see sense, hmm?”
That was when Petri realised that Bakar had slid so far past sanity that he could no longer see it. Even Sabates might be preferable to this. He couldn’t seem to find words to speak except, “Why not have them just shoot me?”