by Sam Sykes
I blinked. “She just keeps you in here, then? Like a prisoner?”
“More or less. Don’t let me mislead you: the prison is lavish, to be certain, but Mother, shall we say, frowns upon the idea of me being seen outside the house.”
“Yeah, I gathered. What with the poison dart trap and all. How long have you been here?”
“Hm.” Visheron tapped his pointed chin, looked up at the ceiling. “Thirteen years? Perhaps eleven?”
Well, that might account for him not having a very clear idea of what women looked like, I guessed. That aside, I couldn’t help but feel a little bad for him; cells are cells, and I’d seen enough to know how awful they are.
“Damn,” I muttered. “What the hell could a son possibly do to make his own mother lock him up like a criminal?”
Visheron laughed. “Oh, had I been a criminal, Mother would doubtless have been pleased. She’d have a use for me, then, at least. Sadly, at around twelve, it became clear that my talents and interests lay in art and not in her many lessons on geography, economics, and military tactics.” He took a long sip from his glass. “She had such hopes for me, of course. Alas, when I started to manifest and still took no interest, she had me sealed away.”
I pursed my lips. “Manifest” was one of those words that never preceded anything good, like “begat” and “foretold.” And yet, I had to ask.
“Manifest … how?”
Visheron grinned broadly, and there was something rather unpleasant in his smile. He gestured across his face.
“I take it you see Mother in me, but tell me what else you see.”
“I see a decently handsome man with a curious taste in aesthetics.”
“Decently?” Anger flashed across his features, but soon simmered down to mere ire. “Very well, perhaps you require a more forward demonstration.”
He doffed his cap, smoothed back the hair from his scalp. And had I a curse sufficiently blasphemous at hand, I probably would have been spewing it right then. It wouldn’t have been dignified, of course, but hell.
How exactly was one supposed to react to the sight of two black horns jutting from a man’s scalp?
“Norgorber’s nuts,” I whispered. “You’re a fiend.”
“Half of one, at least,” Visheron said. “I like to think the better half.”
“What the hell is Vishera doing in this house?”
“You weren’t aware?” He blinked at me, ran a finger across a horn. “I was certain you were some manner of do-gooder here to put an end to her particular brand of wickedness.”
“Not as such, no. I’m here to find out if she had something to do with a murder.”
“Ah. The Amalien fellow, yes?”
“You know?”
“I hear things.”
“Then she did it.”
“It wouldn’t surprise me if she did.” Visheron quaffed the rest of his wine. Shrugged. “But it wouldn’t surprise me if she didn’t. Mother is both vengeful and aloof. She likes to keep eyes on her fellow nobles, but doesn’t often sully her hands with murder. Apropos of nothing, have you any interest in stripping naked so that I might draw you?”
My face screwed up. “What? No!”
“I see. Well then, I’m afraid I’m no longer interested in this conversation.” He yawned, began to stalk toward the curtained doorway. “Do lock the door on your way out. Mother will know you’ve been here by the sprung trap, but I’d hate for her to think I had anything to do with it.”
“What? Where am I going to find what I need, then?”
“Try the library. East wing. Third door on the left, I believe.” He began to slip inside the doorway. “Mother does love her books.”
I sighed. That was something, at least. I turned to leave, but spared one more moment.
“One thing.”
Visheron paused, looked over his shoulder.
“If you thought I was someone here to stop your mother,” I said, “why were you so forthcoming with information about her?”
He licked his lips. “It’ll be funny. Mother never did have a sense of humor.” He winked. The light of the lantern glimmered off his horns. “I think I got mine from Father.”
16
Bloodlines
Tribal Politics of the Hold of Belkzen …
The Armies of Exploration: A History …
Qadira: More Than a Menace?
I scratched my head as my eyes went down the various rows of books in Vishera’s library. They all went on like this: massive tomes, none less than a hand thick, each one detailing government, military tactics, or various studies of Qadiran politics. Which, I supposed, was exactly the sort of thing you’d expect to find in her library.
For some reason, I expected there would be at least one romance novel.
But the library, such as it was, was only fifty by fifty feet. It consisted of nothing more than a large chair and three walls, each one bearing shelves laden top to bottom with books, and I had gone over each of them over the past hour or so I had been here.
I didn’t find one romance novel.
I didn’t find one book with naughty pictures, either.
And I sure as hell didn’t find a single shred of evidence I could bring back to Dalaris.
Meaning this entire trip was starting to look like one huge waste of time.
And time was something I was going to be running out of very soon. It couldn’t be much longer until the sun rose. Norgorber didn’t love me enough to pull shadows out of the sun’s ass just for my benefit. And if I wasted much more time here, I’d be facing a new guard shift, fresh and attentive and with plenty of daylight to spot me by.
Of course, maybe that was Visheron’s whole intention in sending me here. He might not have had any love for his mother, but my breasts weren’t nearly large enough for him to like me any better. And he was half-devil … or half-demon? Something nasty made a nasty with his mother and turned out something nasty, at any rate. And while I hate to subscribe to stereotypes, fiends don’t live in Hell for no good reason.
That must be it, I thought as I looked around the bookshelves again. Visheron was just screwing with me. I had to have been an idiot to have believed a man with horns bursting out of his head. Unless Vishera was fond of hiding pieces of incriminating evidence inside books, and I wasn’t about to go through each of them looking for—
I paused.
I blinked.
Son of a bitch, how did I not notice that?
There. Western wall. Between the third and fourth bookshelves. A crack that was just a touch wider than the cracks between the other shelves. I knelt down, felt a cold breeze whisper from it.
I hopped to my feet, ran my hands across the spines of the book. I pressed my fingers against each of them, testing them, probing them. On Kyonin’s Stratagems jiggled; no good. Cheliax: Traitor Nation shifted easily; not that one. Twelve Steps to a Closer Relationship with Abadar … did not move.
There we are.
I took it in both hands, pulled it out. There was a heavy-sounding click.
And no ka-chunk followed.
The book came out halfway, then slid back in, pulled by a mechanical lever. The bookshelf slid back into the wall, then slid out of the way, revealing a dark room behind. I was tempted to laugh. Or to groan. In the end, I settled for cursing myself. “Stupid girl.”
Of course. A false bookshelf. I should have seen that coming. But who could blame me for not?
I thought these things were only in stories.
I slipped in, felt my foot catch on something. The bookshelf slid itself shut behind me, triggered by whatever plate I had found. Pitch blackness closed in around me, smothering my senses.
I had to feel my way forward in the dark, though I could tell by the claustrophobic confines that this was a space built between the walls of the library and the next room.
For what purpose, I was soon to find out. As I continued creeping forward, I felt the floor turn to stairs beneath my feet, leading downward i
n a narrow switchback. I continued down, stepping as lightly and carefully as I could afford, lest I trigger something else.
My caution felt vaguely useless, of course. After all, it didn’t make a whole hell of a lot of sense to be careful when I was walking blind down a hidden passage in the house of a crazy woman who might have killed a man and apparently had a fetish for under-worldly pleasures.
My pace slowed until I came to a halt.
Suddenly, I found it rather hard to move, realizing I was up to my neck in shit.
This wasn’t what I signed on for. I had thought this was going to be simple: break into a rich person’s house, find something, get out under the cover of darkness. Just like I had done a hundred times back in Katapesh with Sem.
But Sem wasn’t here. This wasn’t Katapesh. And Vishera wasn’t just a rich woman.
Her son was half fiend. Part of me shuddered to think that Visheron might have been the product of a demon forcing itself onto her. But there was another part of me, a part lodged somewhere in the pit of my stomach, that shuddered at another possibility.
What if a half-fiend was exactly what she had been looking for? What if Visheron was the price she had paid for something darker? People made unholy pacts with the beasts below all the time; hell, Cheliaxians had it as part of their national character. Whatever reward Vishera had earned from it, I was walking right into it.
I had to get out of here. Escape while there was still time. Run back to Dalaris, tell her it was a wash. No evidence, no nothing. Give her the money back, run elsewhere, get out of here. Escape Chariel. Escape the Brotherhood. Escape everything. Run away, run away, run—
“Hello?”
I froze.
“Is someone there?”
That wasn’t the sort of voice you wanted to hear down in a dark, dank secret passage. That wasn’t the sort of voice you wanted to hear anywhere. It slid itself into my skull and slithered down into my chest on a hundred centipede feet and coiled around my ribcage.
“I can hear you breathing.”
And, as far as signs that I should turn and run go, they didn’t get much clearer than that.
And every instinct in me was screaming for me to listen to that. It was just one voice telling me to stay.
Family will cut you for a coin. Strangers will stab you for a laugh. But among thieves, Shy, there’s trust. Because you and me? We’ve got no one else.
I closed my eyes. I sighed.
Sem probably wasn’t talking about Dalaris way back then. But it wasn’t any less true. She may not have skulked in the dark or carried a knife, but she didn’t have anyone else, same as me. And if I left now, she’d be left to deal with this on her own.
I didn’t expect that thought to bother me as much as it did.
And I certainly didn’t expect it to make me resume my descent.
But today was just full of surprises.
I continued down. A faint blue light crept in, slowly ruining the pitch blackness. It grew as I went deeper down the stairs. The air grew colder. But it remained silent. So silent I could almost pretend that I hadn’t heard the voice at all, that it was just a trick of a stressed mind fraught with frightened thought.
In the darkness, a line of blue light framed a black rectangle; a doorway in the darkness. Whatever Vishera was hiding down here, I had found it. And because she had gone to all the trouble of burying it under her house, I was certain she didn’t intend for just anyone to open it.
I ran my hands along the frame, found the hidden latch just next to the handle, clearly intended to be sprung when someone hastily tried to jerk the door open. Too dark to see what it was supposed to trigger, but I didn’t have to. I closed my eyes, drew in a deep breath.
And with it, the scent of oil.
It rose in faint coils of stink from beneath my feet. I glanced down, stepped to the side and, carefully, gave the handle a quick jerk before leaping away.
Ka-chunk.
Two gouts of flame erupted in the dark, lighting up the darkness as they came spewing upward in a wall of flame that would have incinerated me had I stayed just close enough. But their fury was brief, and soon they dimmed to small candle flames beneath a grate on the floor, providing a rather pleasant glow.
I had just made another move for the door when I heard it.
Ka-chunk-chunk.
Two chunks? Who could afford two chunks?
I leapt back as I heard a panel in the wall open, just in time to see a small torrent of chittering, screeching creatures come flying out. Their carapaces glittered against the dark in the dimming light of the fire, and I saw them strike the wall and then go skittering away, just barely making out pincers and curling tails.
I couldn’t help but whistle in admiration.
I had never even heard of a trap that shot scorpions.
Whatever the hell Vishera was hiding, it must be incredible.
And after the few minutes it took me to take care of the lock, I was more than ready to find out. I pushed the door open, a weighty iron thing, and it slid with the faintest of groans, opening up into a thirty-by-thirty room bathed in the soft blue light from a globe hanging near the ceiling overhead.
Magic, obviously. And ordinarily, I might be impressed by that. If it were even remotely the most magical thing here.
You hear tales of wizard treasures and immediately think of the same thing: some ancient, arcane study overflowing with books and magical tomes, a cauldron bubbling with various alchemical apparatus, reagents scattered everywhere, maybe a skull with a candle on it—wizards always keep skulls, for whatever reason. Freaks.
Compared to that, I think Vishera’s hoard would be downright disappointing.
Not for lack of volume, mind you. Everything you’d expect to find was there: staves with weird symbols on them, wands in all manner of suggestive and sinister shapes, rolls upon rolls of scrolls, a table fit with alchemical tools and several potions.
But it lacked the rather haphazard charm you’d expect of a doddering old wizard’s study. Everything here was neat and organized. The staves and wands were arranged on racks like spears, the scrolls sat in their own little shelf-niche, the alchemical vials and tubes were all clean and sterile. Orbs, amulets, rings, whatever—they all had their little places. At the center of it all stood a column of smooth, stainless bronze, my distorted reflection staring back at me from it.
In a way, this all unnerved me.
I don’t trust magic, but I always understood why a wizard—or sorcerer or whatever they like being called—would hoard. The appeal of owning a lot of shiny things, whether or not they shot fire out of them, was something I easily related to.
But there was something too calculated about this setup. I remembered working with a nasty son of a bitch in Katapesh who specialized in ransoms—namely, the part where he’d hack off a limb to send to the loved ones to encourage them to pay. I remembered his many saws and scalpels and cleavers and how he had obsessively cleaned and neatly arranged them.
Vishera’s “workshop,” for lack of a better word, reminded me too much of it. Clean hands, dirty deeds.
In all the cleanliness, though, I couldn’t help but see the sole point of disorderliness. There, upon a desk next to the alchemical apparatus, I saw sheaves upon sheaves of papers left hastily out in the open. Something she hadn’t tidied away yet. Something she had been reading recently.
I flipped through them, studying them. My suspicions were immediately confirmed: her penmanship matched the letters at the centaur camp precisely. She had been behind the attacks, probably behind Gerowan’s murder, as well. But for what cause?
I read on to find out.
Experiment 12, Day 33
Results dissatisfactory. Herbs do not have the desired effect of inducing conception. Suspect either faulty recipe—reminder to self: do not bargain with Yhevesh the Black again—or improper application of herbs.
Unfortunate results for subject. She has, regrettably, died during the attempt. Reminde
r to self: Advise accountant to set aside room in the budget to pay the aggrieved family member. If he refuses, have him removed.
Experiment 14, Day 2
Results EXTREMELY dissatisfactory. Total failure. Potion caused immediate termination of child and near-instantaneous death of mother. Located in First Solace. Good stock. Extremely regrettable. No family.
Mood darkening. The Thing continues to mock me, continues to say that he could easily help me. Reminder to self: practice meditation. Repeat: Do not listen to The Thing. The Thing always lies. It is the nature of The Thing. The Thing does not know. The Thing could not know.
Update on Project Stable
Received report that the centaurs have struck again. Two caravans lost. Total losses: 16 crates of ore (Amalien), 20 crates of silk (Helsen), 12 crates of sundries (Marvalen), 10 crates of weaponry (self). Reminder to self: invest in Helsen silk. Centaurs continuing to take largest toll on his trade.
Irritated. Centaurs continue to strike at caravans, refusing to go for settlements. Seem to be stockpiling instead of pushing their offensive. Other houses continue to refuse to acknowledge they are a threat. Direct centaur leader to press attack or withhold further support.
UPDATE: IMPORTANT
Ancestry of Subject S. just received.
Suspicions confirmed. Compatible genealogy.
Apprehend immediately once Amalien support has been terminated.
Norgorber’s nuts.
Sometimes, the gods curse you. Sometimes, they help you. And sometimes they hand you a suckling pig on a golden platter.
Gods damn it. Stelvan suddenly made a lot of eerie sense to me. She was directing the centaurs to both undermine her competitors and convince the people that they were a threat. And the smart gold said that, when she was ready, she’d be the one to see the centaur “threat” quashed so that Yanmass would heed her for whatever she wanted to say next.
And if she was behind the centaur attack, then it stood to reason she knew about Gerowan’s murder. Hell, she was probably behind it, if this “terminate Amalien support” business was any indication.