by Colin McComb
After three days of considering—three days of straight guard duty, so it’s not like I was supposed to be thinking of something in particular—I hit on my scheme. I’d set a slow-burning fire behind the stable where the knights kept their steel coursers. It’d smoke and look more dangerous than it was, and it’d draw people out because they’d think it would spread. No one else kept animals in there anymore, because no real animals could stand to be next to those magic-forged things. Even when the knights weren’t riding the coursers, there was still a humming in the air around them, sometimes strange clickings and tickings. It spooked the real animals too much. Of course, the knights wouldn’t hear of keeping their steel creatures outside, so they took over the stable. Yes. That’d be my plan. Besides, it’s not like I was going to burn the stable down. Just a little green wood behind the building for smoke, and it could look like kids had been playing with fire before they got scared and fled.
The problem would be how to do it without being spotted, and how to do it so they couldn’t track me after. The knights had relaxed their guard on the stable over the course of the years since they’d first come to town, but they were still among the best trackers I’d ever seen. They didn’t miss clues. I thought I could wait until the ground had dried a bit, come in from the ravine, and maybe wear a pair of boots that were too small for me while I set the fire and made my escape. I’d lead in from the far end of the bridge, and my tracks would mingle with the traffic on the road. It seemed foolproof to me.
I wasn’t careful enough.
The first part went off well enough. I got through the gully, up the slope noiselessly, and laid and set my fire. I didn’t stay long enough to see that it would catch—I’d set enough campfires to have little doubt that it would. I fled back through the ravine, waited for a merchant’s wagon to pass, and climbed back out. I walked several streets before I removed those boots, tossed them atop a roof, and replaced my own. Once I’d done that, I made my way back to the tavern, where I took my favorite seat. About ten minutes had elapsed.
Three minutes later, John, the son of the tavern keeper, slammed open the door and shouted, “Fire! Fire in the stable!” The common room emptied in moments, and the knights poured down the stairs. As they ran outside, buckling their weapons, I took to the stairs. Caltash’s door was open, and they’d be back in no time. I took a quick inventory of the room without touching anything: a desk against the far wall, near the front of the building, three stacks of papers, a box with three dowels in its front. Suits of the knights’ armor near the door, spread open, waiting for their owners to step in. A small cot, its blankets folded with military precision. A footlocker at its base. A pair of boots by the footlocker. Nothing I could see that would permit communication.
Then I looked more closely at the box. It was a metal cube, painted to look like pine. The dowels, about an inch long and maybe half that across, appeared to be some sort of adjustment devices. I twisted one experimentally and was rewarded with a soft hiss, like wind on snow. A second later, a tiny, tinny voice resonated in the box, too quiet to be heard downstairs.
This is base transmission operator 12. Progress report?
I yanked my hand back and looked at the box in horror.
Receiving. Progress report?
I twisted the dowel back with a trembling hand. Magic. I didn’t want to touch it again, but I did, hoping it would quiet the voice, and it did, though I would never forget the sounds of that pressing, insistent voice. The gods! I should have known. The knights had access to the Archmagus and his arcana, and something like this would be nearly a toy for them. They were protected. I shouldn’t have touched the box.
I turned to leave, and Caltash was standing in the door, holding the small boots I had stolen to mask my tracks. “You left these outside.”
I gaped at him. He crossed the room swiftly and crouched to examine his magic device. I turned to watch him. He said, “You have been spying on us since we arrived in town. Did you think we had no idea what you have been doing? You need to tell me, this instant, why I should not have you tortured to death.”
I had no ready answer.
“You will not tell me? Then I will answer for you. You are not dead because I know you can keep a secret, and because you can keep a secret, you are now my agent. Mine. Do you understand me? You are now my eyes and ears in this place. Every week you will report to me or one of my subordinates the doings of this town, no matter how minor. You will pay attention to the local merchants and their cargoes. You will track the conversations of those idiots who style themselves wealthy. You will watch the comings and goings of the trappers and farmers and see if any of them deviate from their ordinary patterns. In short, William Lawson, your final years are going to be devoted to me and informing me of every smallest detail of your town. I will not threaten you, of course. You know the penalty for disobedience.”
He smiled faintly. “Of course, you’ll have questions. How much will you be paid for this? How will I know if you attempt to reveal any of this? What if you try to escape? The answers are simple. For the first, you shall be paid with the remaining years of your natural life. For the second, I urge you to try me. For the third, we caught your stupid ruse with the boots, did we not? What makes you think you can outrun or outwit us?”
“There are other escapes,” I said.
“Lawson, you have not seen even the merest trace of the Archmagus’s work. I tell you now that even death holds no escape.” He looked over my shoulder and nodded to someone behind me. I didn’t give him the satisfaction of turning around. “Your first assignment is to allow one of my men into Underhill Tower.”
“I don’t—”
He cut me off with a chop of his hand. “I did not say you could do this now. But you know how you can find out. You’ve opened your hand to the apprentice, and he’ll do it for you if you ask him properly. The next time he comes to town, I want you to secure an entry into the tower.”
“Why can’t you do that yourself?”
“The boy does not trust me, and with good reason.”
“Can’t you get the Archmagus to open the tower?”
“His time is far too valuable to the king. And my time is far too valuable to spend answering your idiotic questions. I have given you an order, and I expect you to fulfill it within the week. Dismissed.” He picked up a sheaf of papers from his desk.
I nodded and left.
The next few days held nothing but terror for me. I was distracted, totally unfocused. I wracked my mind trying to think of a way to escape, and I couldn’t. I’d have to wait for years before I tried, and I didn’t think I had years left. So gods help me, I set myself toward turning you against your master.
I still hadn’t come up with anything when I saw you walking into town from the north, so I just threw out a greeting. To my great surprise, you responded. We walked toward town for a bit, and somehow I managed to convince you that Caltash needed to speak urgently with you, but that it had to be quick. We went to the Beard together, but Caltash was out—as I knew he would be. I drew you aside, and I told you confidentially that I knew what Caltash’s business was—that he needed to speak to Underhill on an urgent Imperial matter, but that the magus was apparently too busy to come down to town. You laughed cynically and said that the old man was just drinking too much again. When I said that it might make matters easier if Caltash could just get into the tower and meet Underhill there, a cloud crossed your face, and you asked me if maybe Caltash intended something worse for him.
I said, “Would it be so bad if he did?” I was ready to cover that up with a laugh, but I saw that I didn’t have to.
“No,” you said. “It wouldn’t be so bad at all.”
“I don’t think he means any harm,” I said, knowing that it was a lie. “You’d be helping Caltash tremendously, and I get the feeling he’s a good man to have on your side.”
“Next week,” you said, “you’ll be the one to retrieve our shopping order. Inside that ba
g you’ll find a leaf. Tell Caltash to take that leaf to the southern copse—I know you know the one—stand in the central clearing, trace the leaf’s veins, and he’ll find himself in the tower. And tell him I want to study with the Archmagus. I’ve learned all I can from Underhill.”
I said I would, and I did. I did it partly because I feared Caltash, and partly because I could see the blackness behind your eyes, and I feared that more.
When I gave Caltash the news, he grinned like a wolf and slapped me hard on the back. “Good work, Lawson,” he said, and he went upstairs to his office. I heard him muttering into his speaking box, and I left, sick with dread.
Three days later, a nondescript stranger rode into town on a small courser of the sort the knights use. She answered our questions politely but distantly and came straight to the Beard. She went upstairs, unchallenged by the knights on duty, spoke to Caltash, and left. She disappeared after that, though it might have been that she was so average in appearance that no one would remember her from one day to the next. Still, it seems no one saw her until I brought the courier bag to Caltash at the end of the week. When I walked into the office, the stranger was there, dressed all in black, from head to toe to fingertip. A hood lay across her shoulders, and straps and buckles held all manner of unfamiliar gear tight to her body. Her eyes were covered with smoked glass, and her chin and cheekbones looked false, padded on. She didn’t bother to disguise the way her mouth curled when she looked at me, like you’d look at a small worm, with mild distaste and contempt.
“Open the package, Lawson,” said Caltash. I did, and atop a list written in Underhill’s distinctive hand lay a silvery, metallic leaf. “Do you remember the activation instructions?” he asked the stranger.
The woman nodded once.
“Then go.”
She plucked the leaf from the bag and slid toward the door. She didn’t walk from the room so much as fade out of it. I swear I never heard a footstep.
When she’d gone, I said, “I thought you were sending a delegate, Captain, not an assassin.”
He said, “Aren’t you supposed to be shopping for the magus and his apprentice?”
I swallowed my pride and left.
You came back to town three days after that, walking straight to the market, and you had that deep wound up your cheek. I’m surprised that whatever it was didn’t take your eye. You were walking with Underhill’s staff in your hand. Second thing I noticed was that you were wearing the master’s black. You looked right at me, but I don’t think you saw me—you were looking for Caltash, and you found him. I didn’t hear your conversation, but I saw his look of worry quickly replaced by a sort of glee when he read the signs I’d read on you.
The master of Underhill Tower is dead, they said.
I inched as close as I could, just after you’d thrust papers into his hands, and caught the very end of the conversation. I saw Caltash’s ironic bow and heard his farewell, “As you wish, Magus Underhill. As you wish.” As you left, he gave some signal, and his knights appeared from the crowd around him.
“We have what we need,” he said. “We ride in fifteen minutes.”
He stayed for a moment, looking around the square. He saw me watching and beckoned me over.
“We are leaving, Lawson,” he said, “but do not think that this means you are free. I am leaving you that box. I expect a report every Marketday at sundown. I expect you to pay special attention to the new magus of Underhill Tower. Do not disappoint me.” He gave me a cruel smile, and that was the last I saw of him.
Now I sit here with this infernal box, and I realize that this is the end of the affair for me. Death holds no escape, he said. We’ll see about that. I’m almost sixty years old now, and I won’t be good as a guardsman for much longer. Not that it ever made a real difference in the first place. None of it ever made a difference. I have a sharp blade and I’m not afraid of a little pain. I hear the first cut is the worst, and when I think about it frankly, I know that a physical wound won’t compare to the pain of losing everything I thought I was.
I’m including this letter in your weekly shipment. I hope it reaches you. I hope it’ll help you. You’re going to need all the help you can get, and I think anything I could have offered would have been tainted by betrayal. You deserve better than that, even if you betrayed your master.
Goodbye.
William Lawson
The Apprentice’s Confession
I could say that I had no idea what Captain Caltash had planned for my teacher when I gave Lawson the passkey to the tower’s transport system. I could say that I thought it would be best if the old Underhill had been forced to confront Caltash about failing to aid in the search for the errant knight and the king’s daughter. I could invent excuse after excuse, but the plain truth is that I knew what was coming. I knew that Caltash intended no words, that he had already judged my teacher—and I was glad of it, glad. If I am to be honest with myself, I was delighted to have a chance to betray him.
You might say that I had ill-repaid a man who saved my life—but what had he saved it for? Unceasing drudgery, physical abuse and threats of more violence, and endless diatribes against my stupidity and youth, a youth he was wasting in the dim-lit passages and spotless workshops of Underhill Tower…spotless, because I made them so. For the first few years, he was afire with the possibility of teaching me his craft, and while he was quick with his fists or his staff, I learned much from him. More, I learned how to learn, and learned quickly. Was he responsible for shaping my mind like this, or was it native ability?
I still don’t know the answer, but I do know this: he had ceased teaching me much of anything after the episode with the wolves, though he was always delighted to criticize my work when he deigned to honor me with his presence. He rarely offered suggestions, telling me that his time was too valuable to waste on such trivialities as my education. His time, apparently, was better spent reading broadsides from Terona (sent to him by his contacts in the city, using the tower’s transport), communicating with a very few other of his magi peers via shielded farspeakers, and drinking heavily. He kept up on the doings of the High Houses and the Lesser, and once told me that it was crucial work, because without their tithes and their commissions, we’d never have survived this long. Got to play them against each other, he said. And it was true—when we created a hidden farspeaker for the Westkitts to install in the private chapel of the Deng palace, we sold the piece that would render that work obsolete within a week or so. It was an old game, intended to neutralize their advantages against each other, working for the benefit of the Council of Magi…which is to say, most of the time for the benefit of the Empire.
His moods swung wildly, from giddy excitement to bone-crushing depression to focused rage. The drinking made it worse. When he emerged from his rooms, staggering through the halls, he sought me out to harangue me and demand respect from me.
Respect him? Hardly. He coasted on his past successes, and his demand for respect when he treated me as an inferior was maddening. One cannot respect a man like that, and he knew it, and it infuriated him that I knew it, too.
For the most part, when I heard him in the halls, I retreated to my work rather than suffer another beating at his hands. He rarely interrupted me when I was at the tables, tracing circuits or studying from the old textbooks in the library, but occasionally he broke even this rule to relieve his boredom, the tedium of the routine he had imposed on himself.
So yes, I was glad to be rid of him for these reasons.
But there was another reason I thought Caltash’s judgment apt: because the old magus was guilty. He was guilty of the exact crime of which Caltash suspected him. He did not tell me—I discovered it myself.
I had been looking for spare pieces of preassembled machinery to include in the latest blade I was crafting and discovered some small chips in a drawer. I investigated their design and analyzed their purpose before I ran a more serious diagnostic, and I concluded they could only be signali
ng devices. When I attached them to our analytical machines, I found they had been inscribed with unique signifiers, indicating that they had been designed for a specific individual. Further investigation—including a circumspect and guarded farspeaking call to Terona—revealed that the number and arrangement of these signifiers were unique to the Elite branch of the knighthood. I did not dare ask about the exact number, because I’d already grown suspicious and didn’t want to confirm my find to my contacts before I’d had a chance to digest it.
Instead, I took the chips to Underhill’s room at the midpoint of the tower. A clever arrangement of skylights in the joints of the building focused sunlight across his desk. A small library of references and physical and chemical texts lined the walls behind him, all caged in and locked away with the key he wore around his neck. He was drunk, as usual, blearily focused on some esoteric text that I doubted he could fully comprehend. I dropped the chips on the desk. He stared at them for a second, letting their shape sink into his mind, and when he realized what they were, he blanched and swept them quickly into a drawer in his desk.
“Get out,” he snarled, and he reached for the staff leaning against the side of his desk. His reaction was all I needed to verify my suspicions.
I gave him the tiniest of bows and walked back through twisting passages to the workshop. As I walked, I considered. What would living in these labyrinthine passageways for decades do to a man’s mind? Would his thoughts move like this? He had received funding from all the High Houses to research their pet projects. He had studied in Terona. He had helped perfect the Knights Elite. He had gained glory among the magi for his studies before squandering it now.