by Jenn Stark
An attack.
Men swarmed over a house like beetles, pouring through windows and doors. Different figures streamed out the back, as if fleeing in terror. The beetles ravaged the house completely, leaving nothing but a gleaming skull, then they too rushed on. A moment later, the skull house disintegrated into tiny swords of bone, scattered by the wind.
The image cleared.
“What the hell was that?” Simon squeaked.
I didn’t want to think about it. “Cover that up,” I said. “We need to get out of here.”
“Affirmative.” Leaning down to pick up the ragged cloth, Simon quirked his head to the side. “Ya know, that geyser is still rushing along at a pretty good clip,” he said. “We get to the aquifer, we could get out.”
I squinted toward the unforgiving rock ceiling where we’d fallen to the temple floor. “Well, we’re not getting out the way we came in, that’s for sure.”
Fishing into my hoodie pocket, I pulled out a card. Only one this time. I didn’t have time to screw around.
My heart sank as I ran my penlight over the image.
“What is it?” Simon stepped toward me, also angling his light down. He paused. “Three of Swords? That means you’re going to do surgery or break my heart or something, right?”
“Sometimes,” I said. “Or it’s grief, dismay, disappointment.”
“None of those sound good. What else?”
“Recognition of your limitations, necessary cutting—” I pursed my lips, thinking about that, then glanced his way. “Simon, how did you get the two disks to work? The ones in the rock.”
“I grabbed them.” He shrugged. “Flattened my palms against them, actually.” He paused, screwing up his face toward me as he swept the light my way. “Why?”
“No reason.” I looked at my hands, the shiny gold band on the third finger of my left hand, mocking me in the thin beam. The thing looked exactly like a wedding ring, a fact I was sure hadn’t been missed by Armaeus Bertrand, the Magician of the Arcana Council, when he’d clamped it on me days earlier. Only, the band wasn’t a wedding ring; it was a tracking device. And apparently, the only way I could remove it was to chop my finger off—or invoke stronger magic than Armaeus’s.
Irritation riffled through me anew. Stronger magic. I was an artifact hunter, hard stop. Sure, I used Tarot cards to find what I needed. Sure, if the money was right, I was a willing assistant to those who possessed their own power. I was even getting pretty good at astral travel, at least when a Council member boosted me along.
But I didn’t generate magic. Armaeus knew that. The entire Council knew that. So this smug attempt to test me was seriously cheddaring my cheese.
I grimaced. If what I suspected about the Three of Swords was right, it looked like I was about to possibly kill two birds with one stone. Still, I’d kind of grown attached to my fingers. I wanted to keep it that way.
“Hey, what’re you doing?” Simon’s penlight followed me as I strode across the room to where the altar peeked out of the rubble. The stains that smeared over it seemed much more malevolent now, and I sighed, staring down for a long moment.
“You got the shield wrapped tight?” I asked over my shoulder. “I don’t know if this will work, but if it does, we probably won’t have a lot of time.”
“Sure…whoa, really?” Simon stopped short while I reached down to free the knife from my boot. “I know you hate that ring Armaeus gave you, but you really think this is the—”
“Shut up, Simon.”
I slashed the blade deep into my palm and slapped my hand to the stone altar.
A fiery river of agony blasted through me, the regular pain of the knife cut mingling with something far greater. A temblor rumbled through the ground and sent a sizzling jolt up my legs. I wondered for a moment exactly what had triggered the devastating earthquakes in ancient times that had buried this city not once, but twice. Behind me, Simon staggered to the right, his scope swinging crazily.
“Nothing’s happening,” he said, the tiniest bit of panic creeping into his voice. “Shouldn’t have something happened? Because I’m looking around, and nothing’s happened. Whatever you did, it isn’t enough.”
“Son of a—” Stowing my penlight, I put the hilt of the knife between my teeth and bit down. Then I lifted my other palm and slid it along the blade, slicing open a deep flap of skin. I bit out a curse as I smacked that palm also down on the stone altar, my blood mingling with the blood and wine of the ancients. Of all the times to leave the hand sanitizer back in the hotel—
A second tremor rocked the room, then a deluge of debris showered from the ceiling, rocks clattering around us.
“There—there!” Simon shouted as a portion of the nearest column swung inward. “Come on.”
Not waiting for me to react, he dashed forward. Queasiness swamped me despite the adrenaline surge, but I yanked my hands back from the altar, then ripped the blade out of my mouth. I pounded across the open room as chunks of dirt and stone rained down.
“C’mon, Sara, pick it up—” Simon’s call sounded strained, but I didn’t need the extra motivation to lean into my run. I dove through the opening even as the door started rolling shut. The force of my progress pushed Simon forward, and we splashed into shallow puddles lining a narrow, tall tunnel. The floor of the tunnel angled sharply up.
“Shouldn’t there be more water?” I gasped. I shoved the knife back into its boot sheath. My hands stung with pain as I clenched them into fists.
“You’d think.” Simon had tucked the shield under one arm and was now pointing his LIDAR scanner down the corridor. “That’s no good,” he said, squinting at the screens. “Something’s coming—fast. Water and rock, and a whole lot of it.” He shoved his gadget in his pocket and pulled something else out.
Another rumble through the ground sent us both reeling. With no further need for conversation, we started climbing up the steep incline of the aquifer, scrambling over chunks of fallen rock that served as unintended stairs. Water swelled behind us, and Simon pivoted, emptying his pockets even as I stumbled past him. I squinted at him, but he was dropping what looked like rocks into the corridor—fistfuls of them.
“What’re you doing? I demanded. “The passage splits off here, and I need your scope.”
“Gimme a second—”
“Dude, now.” I turned and stumbled forward, wincing as my hands shredded further against the rough rock.
“Go, go, go!” Simon barreled into me right as the upswell reached us. We dove into a side passage, drenched but not drowning, while the water continued its race to the surface along the main aquifer.
“There!” Simon urged—forcing me toward a hole that looked no larger than his penlight. “Readings say its thin, maybe only a foot, and mostly shale.”
Another temblor ground through the stone. Earth fell away from the hole, opening up a patch of daylight the size of my head. Muttering an apology to my bleeding hands, I scrabbled at the disintegrating dirt. Simon worked beside me, pummeling the gap until the walls gave way. We tumbled through the cavity, Simon’s lanky body somersaulting beside me until we both landed in a heap.
Above us on the ridge, another mini geyser burst through the blowhole. We’d somehow landed below and to the south of the dig site by a good fifty feet, nowhere near the forum.
“Careful,” I muttered, scraping the mud out of my eyes as Simon popped upright. “We need them to think we’ve gotten showered by the same mud they have, so Fonti doesn’t blame us for whatever’s going on up there. Let’s get close enough to be seen by one of the lower-level interns, then clear out.”
“Sounds like a plan.” Still, Simon seemed in unusually good spirits as we made our way along the ridge. A final burst of water shot high in the air. He stared upward, grinning ear to ear. “I don’t think anyone will be paying too much attention to us, though.”
The screams of the diggers drowned out Simon’s quiet words, their cries escalating into whoops and yelps of deligh
t. I flashed back to the image of the Fool emptying his pockets in the middle of the rushing water of the underground aquifer…
As priceless treasures of rubies and gold rained down over the Hippos dig.
Chapter Two
“Armaeus will want you on this flight, Sara.” Simon peered at me worriedly as we walked through the Tel Aviv airport five hours later. “He thinks you’re coming right back to Vegas.”
“Uh-huh.” I eyed him. “What did you tell him?”
“Mission accomplished, and we were heading for the airport, that’s it” he said. “But he’ll figure it out soon enough. Why piss him off?”
I grimaced. So many reasons, so little time. “I’m flying commercial, and my manifest isn’t a secret. You’re going back with the shield. It’s already on the plane, right?” Simon nodded and I pushed on. “So I’m going to spend a few days in Paris, visit some old friends I haven’t seen in far too long. No big deal. I’ll be back to Vegas after that.”
His steps slowed to a trudge, like a kid brother I couldn’t shake. “Yeah, but—when?”
“A few days, Simon. A week. Nothing’s going to blow up in the next week that I can’t handle when I get back.”
“Hey.” He brightened. “I’ve already packed the shield onto the jet. Maybe it can fly back on its own, and I could come with you. I haven’t been to Paris in a while. I could kick back, take in a few museums—”
I halted in my tracks. “What’s your deal? You got your field trip to test out your new tech, and you got Eshe’s shield. You did everything Armaeus asked you to do.” My own words echoed back to me, and I narrowed my eyes at him. “Unless I’m missing something?”
He shrugged. “He’s the head of the Council, and you’re the most powerful mortal we know right now. He wants to keep an eye on you.”
“Keep an eye?” I held up my left hand, bandaged edge to edge. “Not even that blasted altar of doom could pry that stupid ring off my hand. That’s plenty of tracking for one person. You can tell Armaeus to go spin in small circles, and I’ll get home when I get home.”
If anything, the Fool looked even more morose. “What?” I demanded. “I can’t read your mind, Simon. No matter what you people think of me.”
“It’s just… There’re too many changes in the Connected community.” He rocked back on his heels. “Too quick. Too many people coming out of the woodwork and throwing shade, when it’s been excessively boring for decades.”
“Forgive me if I think you have a skewed perspective on boring.”
“You don’t understand.” He shook his head. “I’ve been doing this for three decades. Thirty years of bumping along without anything much more interesting than watching the stock markets go big then go bust then go big again. When Armaeus found you, things started to move faster. We were collecting artifacts again. Not like we needed more of those, but still. Stuff was happening. The Council actually convened meetings. It was cool. Then the veil between the worlds started to wobble.”
I lifted my brows. “It can do that?”
“Fray, split, whatever.” He waved a hand. “And now there’s this talk of Houses. Like, real live Houses of the Minor Arcana—giving mortals actual standing right alongside the Council. No one even told me about Houses, and I’ve been kicking around for thirty years. The orientation manual absolutely sucks for this job.”
I tried to process everything Simon was saying, but he was talking way too fast. I glanced at the monitors. My flight wasn’t for another hour, and his was whenever his bony ass got on the Council’s private jet.
We had time. And I wanted answers.
I steered Simon into a bar, never mind that it was ten in the morning. He’d done worse to me. “So what’s the real story with the Houses?” I asked, casual as all hell. It was a reasonable question. Annika Soo, head of one of the most powerful syndicates on the Connected black market, had also, it turned out, fronted one of these mythical Houses. Right up until she’d conferred that leadership position to me not two weeks earlier. So it’d be handy for me to know some details.
Simon lifted his hands in defeat as he slumped further on his stool. “That’s the problem. I don’t know anything more than you do. I don’t even think Armaeus does anymore.”
The bartender cruised over. I pointed at the bottle of vodka on the middle shelf. “Neat,” I said.
“That’s why Armaeus is all freaked,” Simon continued as the bartender busied himself with our drinks. “The four Houses of the Minor Arcana haven’t been in play since the Middle Ages. There’s no history, no hint of them—other than Soo’s House of Swords—and we didn’t know about that until these past several months. As to the rest…” He shrugged. “The Council stopped looking a long time ago for evidence of House activity. We couldn’t poke our noses too far into what wasn’t our business.”
I’d heard this song before. “Because you didn’t want to interfere.”
“Bingo.” He smiled wearily. “The number one rule of Arcana Council: there is no Arcana Council. We don’t mess with mortal magic, other than making sure it stays balanced. Since the Houses are for mortals, when we lost track of them, we simply had to accept that.”
Simon picked up his glass. “Except, we couldn’t believe they’d simply disappeared. Armaeus was convinced they’d gone underground, and was furious he couldn’t do more, learn more. And there weren’t any mortals who could get him deep enough into the Connected community to draw out the truth.”
Slow understanding dawned. “Until me.”
“Yep.” Simon squinted at me. “You were the first mercenary we’d hired who didn’t…well, die. In a hurry. The others didn’t last.”
I stopped in the process of lifting my own vodka, then put the glass down again. “There were other artifact hunters?” Of course there would have been others. The Council’s need for toys hadn’t simply erupted out of nowhere a little over a year ago. But I’d never questioned Armaeus needing me for such work. I’d simply done it. “They died?”
The last question was more rhetorical, but Simon answered it anyway. “Not so much died as burned out. Literally, zzzzzt.” He made a gesture with his fingers as if pulling a string taut. “They couldn’t function after a few jobs.” He rolled his empty vodka glass. “You’re different.”
I was different, yeah. I’d run more than thirty jobs for the Council in the past year and change, and so far, no zzzzzt. But Armaeus couldn’t have known I’d be so hardy at the outset. He’d simply kept pushing me. And apparently, I hadn’t been the first mercenary he’d ever pushed.
The wreckage to my body was one thing. He’d done a good job healing that so far. But what about the wreckage to my mind?
I scowled. “Where are they now? The others?”
“No clue,” Simon shrugged. “Maybe they’re dead now. Armaeus stopped hiring for a while, maybe ten years before he found you. But in all the time he’d been working with hunters, the Houses never came up. When he realized Annika Soo was more than the head of a criminal syndicate, that was the first I’d heard about the possibility of the Houses still existing. I don’t think he knew she ruled Swords, though.”
“Oh, right.” I quirked him a glance. “Reading minds is kind of his thing.”
“I know. But it’s like there’s some sort of shield between the House leaders and the Council. He’s not used to being shielded…except from you, of course, and you surprised him from the start. Which means maybe there’s more out there like you, and that’s kind of a problem.”
I signaled to the bartender to pour us another round of drinks, and pushed my glass toward Simon. I hadn’t had a chance to drink from it yet, but this information was enough of a high.
“A problem for who?” I asked. “If the Houses stay hidden, how does that hurt anyone?”
“No one can stay hidden anymore,” Simon said, lifting my glass. “It’s all hands on deck. Magic hasn’t been moving this fast in hundreds of years. The Council thinks maybe we’ll have an arcane renaissance th
at hasn’t happened since the Dark Ages. Why do you think the Magician went all the way to Hell to find the Hierophant? This war that’s coming, it’s mortal on mortal and mortal on magic, yeah. But there’s something else stirring, some deeper shift, and we don’t know if it’s good or bad. We have to be ready.” He grinned wryly. “Which means we have to keep tabs on you.”
“Uh-huh.” I narrowed my eyes at him as he drained his drink. “Well, you’re not coming with me to Paris. I’m not on the Council, no matter how much work I do for you guys. I’m a free agent.”
He tipped his glass my way, looking more relaxed than I’d seen him in ages. “You were a free agent. When I met you, anyway. You were getting us, what, some bowl from Crete? I think that was what Armaeus had sent you for. You got it too, and all you wanted was money and to get the hell out of Vegas as fast as you could.”
“Yeah, well. I wasn’t a fan.”
“But now you’re in it up to your neck, aren’t you? So important that Armaeus needed to put a ring on it.” Simon snickered, setting down his drink. His smile got a little looser—too loose, and he pointed a wobbly finger at me. “You keep surprising him every time he turns around, blowing things up and—”
“Use your inside voice, buddy.” I reached out to stabilize Simon as he lurched toward me, his arms windmilling. When I caught him, heavily, his face was right at my ear.
“Poison, Sara,” the Fool said succinctly. “High grade. Fast acting. Didn’t track it at first but it’s going to incapacitate me pretty quickly, starting with my extremities. Not going to be worth shit to you here, but I can ah, make myself scarce.”
I blinked at him. I knew Simon had some teleporting capabilities—something about bending electrons—but… “You can teleport while poisoned?”
He pulled back and met my gaze. “I’m sure going to try. This is seriously high-grade dope, and I don’t want any part of someone who knows this particular blend. Sorry to bail on you.” He stared hard into my eyes, and I felt the hum of his desperation. “You got about eight seconds till you’re on. Lead guy is short and he’s coming up fast.”