The timing was odd. The exhibit didn’t open for another week or so. Why so much security now? Tyrissa couldn’t recall seeing this much during construction. She filed it away as a mental note. The Thieves had a grudge against the Talons, as they made clear in the attack at Southwest’s guildhall. With this many Talons assigned to one job they could become a target. It felt like grasping at straws, a desire fueled by hours spent sifting through newspaper reports to make any kind of connection.
Tyrissa left through the south entrance and began the descent into the streets of Crossing and towards home.
Away from the late bustle of the main thoroughfares the streets of Northeast Crossing were still and peaceful in the evening. Try as she might, Tyrissa couldn’t see the fears of her clients and the newspaper reports in the streets of Khalanheim by night. She had no fear of the dark here. Thanks to the Cadre, she saw the different corners and angles of the city by night as often as by day. She couldn’t help but feel secure in the sense of ownership of the alleyways around her new home.
Her mind tugged her attention upward, the Pact giving her a warning of nearby magicks. Rapid, approaching footfalls sounded down from the rooftops, and Tyrissa felt a chill run through her that had nothing to do with the cool evening. Fire. She kept walking, feeling exposed without her staff and moving one hand inside her coat to check for her knife. Well, Karine’s knife, though Tyrissa had taken to wearing it instead of her own almost immediately. It made a better side arm and the presence of the winged shield emblem on it brought a certain comfort.
A wash of orange light bathed the alleyway as a slim figure dropped to the ground ahead of her, an echo of a diving emberhawk. She landed with a crisp grace, a ring of fire burst out from her feet, consuming scraps of debris before dying out. She stood, flames flicking along her arms and shoulders like a shawl. It was the fire juggler from the Harvest market, and like an emberhawk she was thin and skeletal, even worse off than when Tyrissa first saw her.
No fear of the dark, no fear of the flames. Tyrissa walked closer, trusting in her Pact and experience with the creatures of the Vordeum Wastes. Her bones turned to ice once again, the sensation cresting when she came within arm’s reach of the Fireweaver. The flames winked out from her bare arms, and she took a step back. Tyrissa stopped, remembering the raw fear the girl showed the last time their paths crossed.
“Are you Her replacement?” she asked.
Karine. The Pact Witch. Of course she would know about her. She probably lived in fear of being hunted like the other slain Pactbound. How did this girl know Karine was gone?
“Who’s replacement?” Tyrissa replied, hoping to coax out more details.
“You know. The Witch. The Huntress.” She avoided eye contact, only meeting Tyrissa’s gaze in quick flickers, like glancing at the sun.
“No. I’ve been looking for her.”
The girl shook her head, the motions jerky. “She’s gone, and you’re here now.”
“Yeah,” Tyrissa said bitterly. “She’s gone. What’s your name?”
She coughed out a rueful laugh. “Just call me Ash. It’s been good enough.”
When Ash spoke, Tyrissa could see that her teeth were stained the color of dried blood and curls of smoke followed her breath into air. When silent, she chewed on something on one side of her mouth.
“I’m Tyrissa. I’m not her replacement, but you could say we’re the same.”
“No,” Ash said, shaking her head, eyes shut tight for a moment. “Not the same. She used to come find me. Once a week. She could calm them, soothed their anger and quiet their demands of me.” Ash held her left hand out and five candle-size flames sparked to life at the tips of her spread fingers.
“With you, all they do is rage. You’re not the same.” She clenched her outstretched hand into a fist and it burst aflame, flaring from orange to a searing blue. Tyrissa felt the frost coursing through her bones respond in kind, deepening to a glacial well. Tyrissa clenched her teeth, trying to fight it down and maintain control like she somehow did in the underground. She didn’t need a repeat of the caravan. Not now.
The chill inside Tyrissa had demands of its own, an urge that she should reach out and end this girl. It’s desires became Tyrissa’s own. She wanted to end Ash’s pain, even if she didn’t know how.
Ash let the fire wreathed about her fist die away and said, “She told me I wasn’t a danger. Has that changed?” Ash turned her head aside and spat bright red glob onto the cobblestones. It smoked for a moment before cooling into the color of rust, of Ash’s teeth.
Pity checked the unwelcome sense of wrath. Ash was about her age, but looked as if the Pact she bore had brought her to the precipice of ruin. Tyrissa struggled for words while trying to suppress the pleading sensation from the ice in her bones that wanted nothing more than release.
“You’re only a danger to yourself,” Tyrissa lied. It was all she could think of.
Seemingly satisfied with Tyrissa’s non-answer, Ash nodded. “If only it were up to me alone. The Flames scream otherwise.” Ash turned and burst alight once again and ran down the alley, quicker than the fastest sprinter. She soon passed out of sight, flying across the cobblestones on wings of flame.
Tyrissa stood in place afterword and tried to affect the elemental power surging through her bones. It was different from Earth, a constant flow that dispersed through her instead of a weighty reserve. She tried to concentrate and will it to do something, anything, but the frosty presence simply flowed away from her. After a few minutes she gave up and let the ice in her bones thaw away on its own.
She resumed her walk home, now with renewed worries on her mind. She had to start finding answers soon, before she shared in Ash’s fate: lost and near ruin. She had to find Vralin.
Chapter Twenty-five
By day, the air in the Mill district was thick with the scent of baking bread, lingering through the riftwinds and smothering the underlying scents of the city. Tyrissa walked along Baker’s Row, a broad road that paralleled the Rift with rows of windmills to one side and a long chain of bakeries on the other. The mills turned endlessly in the riftwinds, many built on the very edge of the cliff with only thin links of wire fences separating the flow of street traffic from the precipitous drop. At the junction of Baker’s Row and the broad avenue that ran up the hill to the university was a grand half-circle plaza. A swarm of vendor carts would gather here in the pre-dawn light before carrying their goods off to every corner of the city, though this late in the morning the plaza was largely empty.
Tyrissa came here this morning under somber slate skies for a pair of loaves to restock Liran’s spotty stores, though succumbed quickly to the constant stream of temptations along the street, buying a pair of honey caked pastries. They were but one sample of hundreds available in the plaza alone and if the Khalans had a second true love after coin, it was baked goods. She quickened her pace on the way home to escape further temptations. Tyrissa passed a newsstand near the nebulous boundary between Mill and Bridge, a little booth between shops that blended into the background of the city. Both daily papers were prominently displayed, today’s headlines catching her eye with extra-large black text.
‘Threats of Mayhem’, the Daily Coin pronounced.
‘A Thief’s Promise’, the Times of Khalanheim countered.
Though sick to death of reading newspapers, Tyrissa caved and handed the shaggy haired boy manning the booth a pair of copper coins for a copy of the Times. She read as she walked, eyes flickering between paper and street to weave through traffic. The Thieves were promising a night of chaos and mayhem, as the headlines said, and they promised it tonight. Every major guild, both newspapers, and Central received coordinated warnings late yesterday, all in the form of neatly printed letters. Guard your warehouses and vaults, they said, we’re coming.
Tyrissa hurried home with increased urgency as the feeling that this would tie into her own search struck her. She had even less time to fit the remaining pieces together
than she thought.
Liran had a spread of ledgers and receipts and paperwork on the table, working even when he wasn’t. He muttered a greeting as she entered their shared home but didn’t look up as Tyrissa set her small haul of bread on a clear corner of the table. She unfolded the newspaper and read the headline article again. Tonight might be her chance.
“Liran, did you look into that list of business I gave you?”
“They’re shell operations for the Rift Company,” he said, eyes still fixed on a particular sum at the bottom of a page.
“All of them?”
“All of them. It’s common practice for various insurance and tax reasons.”
Well that was one pair of threads tied together. Tyrissa ran through her mental checklist, a list that had become a mantra over the last few days. Vralin’s bounty was funded by Guldres of the Rift Company. The Rift Company employed the Windmage during an expedition that went sour. Vralin now worked with the Thieves and they were hitting Rift Company properties, but rarely taking anything. ‘Your husband knows what I want.’ But what did Vralin want? He didn’t mind the bounty otherwise he wouldn’t be in Khalanheim. Something specific had kept him rooted in the city since escaping Morgale.
“What can you tell me about Johan Guldres?” Everything led back to Guldres.
Liran ran a hand through his hair, finally looking up from his work. “He’s a board member of the Rift Trade Company. He oversees the Rift Company’s Hithian Crater area operations, including high-risk expeditions and excavations. He’s fabulously wealthy, which is well enough as his wife is a big spender.”
“Would he happen to have a personal collection of Hithian artifacts?”
“Yes. Pulls them from the ruins himself. Well, not personally, but funds the men that do. That’s why he dropped the scratch for that amber teardrop necklace. It’s a rather unique Hithian relic and status symbol in one, apparently easily stolen, package.”
It was the last piece she needed. The advertising posters for the new exhibit at the university’s observatory had a footnote that declared: ‘including numerous items from private collections’. There had been a large number of Talons on site during her last visit to the library, scouting the grounds and setting up security details. Tyrissa suspected that if she could sneak a look at the Cadre’s logbook of contracts she would see a rejected commission from the university. Her decision was made in an instant.
“Liran, I think I’m going to do something stupid soon.”
He sighed. “Must you?”
“I think Guldres is setting a trap for Vralin and the Thieves at the observatory.” She tapped the newspaper. “Both sides will use this ‘Thieves Promise’ as cover. Guldres must have something from Hithia that Vralin wants, maybe something from the expedition that set Vralin off in the first place and earned the bounty. So why not put it is out in the open, set a trap, and take him down? Guldres removes a threat, executes on his bounty and any Thieves they capture are a bonus to throw to Central.” She spread her hands and said, “Thoughts?”
“I think you’re a quick study in Khalan intrigue, sister. Please, continue.”
She pressed on. “The string of empty hits must have been Vralin and his allies trying to ferret out whatever it is he’s looking for. The attack at Southwest’s party was an escalation and a threat. If Guldres is going to serve it up on a platter, why not outmaneuver him and turn the trap on its head? If you’re going to spring a trap you go in full bore and bring an unexpected element to the situation. You turn the surprise around on the other guy. I see no reason why I can’t do the same. I go to the observatory tonight and see what I can make happen.”
“So your plan, if we can call it that, is to jump into the middle of a suspected Thieves heist nested within a trap and, what, ask politely?”
Tyrissa drummed her fingers against the table in thought. She knew it wouldn’t be so simple, or without violence. These last months had hardened her, constantly training or sparring, either on the caravan or with the Cadre. She tore down a fire elemental (if a little one), and stood against a flesh and ash daemon. What was one man, Pactbound or not? After all, all she had were questions.
“Yes. Though perhaps not politely. Vralin is the only connection I have back to Tsellien. He must know something and might help me. Even a rejection could be useful information.” She knew that was a vain hope, raised only to reassure Liran. The sight of Karine’s wrecked home came to mind. Tyrissa had no proof Vralin was involved with that beyond a hunch and a dread.
“But he’s—”
“Pactbound? And? That just puts us on even ground. Liran, I’ve spent almost every day since I got this Pact trying to forget it, or run from it, or simply worrying about it. And every time I think I’m getting closer to answers they’re yanked out of reach. I need to do something.”
“I don’t want a repeat of the events that gave you that Pact, Ty. I don’t want my next letter home to include that,” Liran said.
“He’s just a man. It won’t be a repeat of that.”
“I’m not going to be able to stop you, am I?” There was an intangible change in his tone, in his face. For all his casual dismissal or hands-off treatment of her Pact these last few months Liran must have hoped, as Tyrissa once hoped, that there was a way out. Her resolve to keep going deeper had finally broken through that flimsy delusion and Liran now accepted it as fact, as the way it must be.
“No. You won’t.”
Liran gave his mouth a twist, as if swallowing a bitter drink. “Be careful out there, Tyrissa,” he said after a moment, “You never know what the city will spit out at you on a night like this.”
And that was exactly what Tyrissa wanted. She still had time to get ready and it was going to be a long night.
The library was closed by the time she reached the university, but Tyrissa could see a light shining through the little windows set into the doors. She pounded out a set of knocks, causing the glass to rattle. Silence answered, but the light shifted and began to approach. Tyrissa knocked again for good measure and soon the golden light filled the window. A shadow passed over the other side, the locks clicked, and the door cracked open to reveal a narrow selection of Archivist Pieterszen’s wizened face. Tyrissa thought of the library as a second home but she suspected it was Pieterszen’s first.
“Tyrissa? Go home, girl,” he said with a weary bluster. “The campus is on lockdown. There’s trouble afoot tonight.”
“I know,” she said. She knew better than nearly everyone, thanks in part to this very place. “I’m here to help.”
Pieterszen opened the door wider and held his lamp up to get a better look at her. He cocked his head to one side, appraising her as if rereading a passage with a second meaning in mind. Tyrissa was dressed for trouble being afoot, wearing dark colors with her staff across her back and two knives at her hips.
“Are you here… professionally?”
“Freelancing,” she said, shaking her head. “Please, I need to get into the old fort tunnels that connect to the towers. I need to get to the tower closest to the observatory.” From there she would have a superior view of the inner grounds and access to the rooftops.
Pieterszen mulled it over for a moment before pushing the door further open and motioning her inside. “Follow me,” he said as he shuffled away into the stacks. “And shut the door behind you.” Tyrissa complied and trotted after the rustling brown robes in the retreating pool of light.
Abandoned by night and lit by a single swaying lamp, the library became an analogue for the mythical great libraries of the fallen civilizations in stories. The lamp sent fleeting fingers down the aisles, flashes of illumination upon lost secrets. The heights of the tall stacks and shelves vanished in the gloom of the vaulted ceiling, and the alcoves with their study desks became sealed vaults bearing ancient secrets and the objects of power. Tyrissa noticed they headed away from the storerooms that held the newspaper archives.
“Is it not the same way as the news ar
chives?”
“Not for the north towers. That way was filled in years ago during a renovation.” They entered a hallway lined with doors to little offices, each with a nameplate claiming them for different senior staff member. The hallway dead-ended at a wall covered by a flaking oil painting depicting a grander version of the library behind them, shaped the same but with shelves twice as high and towering windows letting in golden rays of light.
The archivist noticed her studying the painting. “The original design,” he muttered as he fished out a skeleton key from the depths of his robes. “The university had the budget to commission an artist to paint it, but not enough to actually build it. Typical. Better off as it is now. All that sunlight would have been bad for the books.”
Pieterszen opened the last door on the left, one with ‘Archivist’ labeled on the door, but no name below. Inside was an empty room ruled by dust and cobwebs, but with a second door set oddly into one wall, a half disintegrated thing clinging to rusted hinges. Pieterszen nodded toward it and said, “Follow that down. It connects to the old tunnels and goes straight on to the northeast tower.”
“Thank you, Archivist.”
“Never saw you here,” he said before shuffling out of the room and leaving Tyrissa in the darkness. She fumbled for the gloworb clipped to the staff harness and pressed the lever, the white light banishing the gloom. She carefully pulled the door outward, worried that it might break at her touch. A stairway descended into the darkness below. Tyrissa paused and let out a short sigh.
Marching off into the darkness is getting a little old.
Valkwitch (The Valkwitch Saga Book 1) Page 25