by Kyra Halland
Lainie fished coins out of her pants pocket and paid the driver, the fare plus some extra, and he tipped his cap to her as she climbed down. The entrance of the building at the base of the tower was an ordinary-looking pair of wooden doors. Her heart pounded nearly fit to burst as she looked at them, and her palms grew clammy with sweat. Behind those doors was the Mage Council and, she hoped, if the gods had preserved his life, Silas. She straightened her duster and took a deep breath. Polite and respectful, she told herself yet again. But firm.
She strode across the square and opened the doors. Inside, the brick building proved to be a single large room butting up against and enclosing the stone base of the tower. Clear morning sunlight streamed in through the windows, lighting the rows of desks in the room. A number of people sat at the desks, writing in ledgers and on sheets of paper and paging through thick books. Across from the front doors was a door in the base of the tower. Two men in the close-fitting black tunics and pants of Mage Council enforcers flanked the tower door. To the left of that door, a pale clerk with thick black hair sat at a large desk. The eyes of everyone in the room went to Lainie; she squared her shoulders and reminded herself that her business here was perfectly honest.
She walked over to the clerk. “I need to see the Mage Council.”
The clerk looked at her, his mouth and eyes thinning in disapproval. His narrow little mustache added to his pinched look. He picked up a pen; on his right forefinger he wore a gold ring set with a milky green stone. “With which member of the Council did you wish to make an appointment, Miss?”
She set her hands on the desk, displaying her own mage ring. “I need to see all of them, and I need to see them now.”
“I’m afraid that’s impossible, Miss. A number of them are away from the city at the moment, and the rest are in a meeting –”
“I’m a mage hunter. I’ve just come from the Wildings with important news.” Not really, but it was close enough to the truth if she did end up telling them about Fazar. She noticed a shifting of expression on the faces of the enforcers, eyes widening slightly in wariness and curiosity – and respect?
The clerk, however, was unimpressed. “A woman mage hunter?” he asked skeptically.
“Why not?” Lainie shot back. “Now, where’s the Council meeting?”
“Why, in the Council room, of course. But –”
“Thanks.” She guessed the Council room must be in the tower; there were no other rooms down here that she could see. She headed for the door in the base of the tower.
“You can’t –!” the clerk protested, but she ignored him. She met the enforcers’ eyes in turn and gave each of the men a brief, sharp nod to show that she respected them as equals and knew that of course they wouldn’t interfere with important mage hunter business. They shifted aside slightly, eyeing her gun holster where it showed from beneath her open coat, and gave her a wide berth as she walked through the door.
Lainie started up the stairs, wondering how far up she would have to go – and, if worse came to worst, how many stairs she and Silas would have to run down to escape. Not far, as it turned out; on the second floor landing was a double door with a sign on it reading Council Room. Polite and respectful but firm, she reminded herself one last time as her heart thundered in her ears. A fierce eagerness to see Silas surged through her body, driving her forward. She set her hands on the twin doorknobs, pulled the doors open, and strode in.
About a dozen men and a handful of women in black robes trimmed with gold sat around a long, polished wooden table, looking at a scattering of papers. Several empty chairs confirmed that some Council members were missing from this meeting. “I want my husband back,” Lainie said.
Too late, she wished she could bite the words back. That wasn’t quite the polite opening she’d had in mind; polite and respectful weren’t easy when she was all worked up like this. But it would have to do.
The Council members all looked up at her, their papers forgotten. Lainie didn’t see anyone who looked like Silas. The man at the center of the far side of the table, who had carefully-styled silver hair and medium-toned skin that suggested some Island blood, gave Lainie a long, assessing look. “I beg your pardon, Miss,” he finally said. “Who are you, and what is this about your husband?”
Her resolution to be polite faltered a bit; she didn’t have the patience for this. They had to know who she was and what she was talking about. “Some of your hunters took my husband, and I want him back.”
He and the woman next to him, pale with brightly-dyed red hair, gave each other a bewildered glance. “I’m afraid I am still at a complete loss, Miss,” the man said. “Now, if you’ll pardon us –”
“My husband. Silas Vendine. Some of your hunters shot him down from his horse and took him. I want him back.”
“Ah. Of course. Siyavas Venedias, you mean,” the man said.
“I’m afraid, my dear,” the woman said, “you don’t have a husband.”
Lainie had tried to prepare herself for the news, but it still hit her like a punch to her gut, knocking the breath from her body. “He’s dead, then.” A powerful flood of grief began to swell inside her.
“No, no, no,” the woman said. “What I mean is, Siyavas Venedias has never had a marriage approved by the Mage Council. Therefore, you are not legally married to him, and, therefore, you have no husband.”
The relief was as sudden and profound as the grief had been. She hardly even cared that they refused to acknowledge her and Silas’s perfectly valid marriage. “Okay. Whether you think we’re married or not, some hunters took him and I’ve come to get him back.”
“You say mage hunters took him?” the silver-haired man asked.
Lainie barely restrained a growl of frustration. For such important people, the members of the Mage Council seemed awfully thick-headed. She hadn’t expected she would have so much trouble making herself understood. “Yes, that’s what I said. Now, he never did nothing wrong but break a couple of rules, but he was trying to do the right thing anyhow, an’ we never hurt no one who didn’t need hurting, so what do I have to do to get him back?” She cringed inside at her incorrect speech. When she was all worked up like this, it was also hard to remember to speak properly, the way she had learned at school.
“I’m afraid I must disagree with you on the seriousness of Venedias’s crimes,” the man said. Lainie drew breath to go on with her plea, but he cut her off. “I’m also afraid that I don’t have the slightest idea where he is.” The others around the table shook their heads as well.
So it was going to be like that. Lainie took one of the money pouches out of her duster pockets. “I’ve got money, if that’s what you want.” She walked up to the table, squeezing between two black-robed men, and dumped the shining contents of the pouch onto the table. “Five hundred gildings.”
The man who’d been speaking raised one eyebrow as the other members of the Council murmured to each other. “That’s quite an impressive offering. However –”
She emptied a second pouch onto the table. “A thousand. The same as the bounty on him.”
“It doesn’t –”
She took out another pouch and added its contents to the pile on the table. “Fifteen hundred. That’s half again as much as the bounty.”
Now the man stood, leaning towards her, bracing himself with his hands on the table. “Listen to me, girl,” he said very slowly and loudly as though she was deaf. “We don’t know where he is. We were unaware that he had been captured. Neither he nor his mage ring have been turned in for the bounty, which, by the way, is now twelve hundred gildings. That bounty has not been claimed. Am I correct?” He looked at the other Council members, and they nodded. “So, you see, whoever took him, they are not working for us.”
Twelve hundred gildings on Silas’s head. And it hadn’t been claimed. The Mage Council really didn’t have him. A chill of fear seized Lainie’s heart and drained the strength from her limbs. All this time, she had been certain she knew
where Silas was, but he wasn’t there. He was well and truly missing. “Then who are they working for?” Her voice sounded hollow in her ears, as though she was hearing herself from a distance. A tight pressure of panic started to build in her chest.
“I’m quite sure we don’t know,” the silver-haired man said. “I do, however, find myself curious as to what is happening to our mage hunters. More than a year ago, Venedias – Vendine – informed us of the death of a hunter called Verl Bissom. A short time later, we received an anonymous report of the death of another hunter, Garis Horden. This report also said that Vendine had gone renegade. At the same time, Vendine dropped out of sight and we’ve been unable to get him to respond to any of our messages. His message box is in the region known as the Bads; we suspect it was abandoned. And then last winter, another mage hunter named Amis Oferdon, who was known to have been tracking Vendine, was found dead in the Bluecloud Mountains. We could only conclude that Vendine was responsible for Horden’s and Oferdon’s deaths, if not Bissom’s.”
No wonder the bounty was so high; Silas was in a load of trouble indeed, if they suspected him of killing other mage hunters. “It wasn’t him that killed Bissom and Horden, I swear,” Lainie said, praying they would believe her word against those reports. “It was a man called Orl Fazar. He tried to kill Silas, too. Silas knew Mr. Bissom and respected him, and he took Mr. Horden’s death awful hard. He even went to tell Mr. Horden’s widow – a Wildings woman – what happened to him. As for Oferdon, the last we saw of him, he was alive. And Silas buried his message box in the Bads because we thought it was you folks that sent Orl Fazar after him.”
“Why would we do that?”
Lainie had already thought about this, to come up with something that didn’t bring the Hidden Council into it. “Because Silas took up with me, and Mr. Horden was married to a Plain Wildings woman, and Mr. Bissom, I don’t know much about him but maybe he did something to make you folks think he’d gone renegade too.”
“We do not assassinate our hunters who turn rogue,” the man said stiffly. “We bring them in alive, if possible, for a legal trial and appropriate punishment. Now, what can you tell us about this Orl Fazar?”
At least they were willing to talk to her and hadn’t just decided she was lying. “He told us he was born in the Wildings to Granadaian mage parents. It was part of a plan to breed stronger mages with mixed Granadaian and Wildings power. He said the people working on that project were important people in Granadaia. He also said them and the people who hired him to kill Silas and Bissom and Horden are connected to the Mage Council.”
“And you believed it was we who sent him?”
“We were in the Bads in the first place because Silas got an order in the message box you folks gave him to meet Garis Horden there and help him out.”
Astonished murmurs flew around the table. “We never sent any such message,” the silver-haired man said. “At least, not to my knowledge.”
“Lord Yeredon,” another man said, “I am deeply shocked and dismayed to think that someone on the Mage Council might be involved in unauthorized and possibly treasonous activities of this sort.”
“I agree, Lord Astentias,” the silver-haired man, Lord Yeredon, said. “This is a very serious and disturbing matter indeed.”
Astentias. The name seemed familiar, but Lainie couldn’t remember where she’d heard it. At the cattle market, maybe? The man had a stern, handsome, deeply-lined face, as dark as Silas’s though he otherwise didn’t look like Silas, and thick, gleaming white hair that flowed in waves to his shoulders. She would have remembered him if she had ever seen him before.
“Do you have any idea where Orl Fazar might be now?” Lord Yeredon asked.
“He’s dead,” Lainie said. “I killed him.”
More whispers followed this. Lord Yeredon looked around the table, giving each member of the Council a long hard look. “I’m afraid I must say that I find this young woman’s story credible. The fifteen hundred gildings she was willing to pay for Vendine’s release speaks to her sincerity, and what she’s told us fits with the unusual circumstances. It appears that there has indeed been a breach in the integrity of this Council. Unfortunately, we cannot conduct an open investigation and risk it being publicly revealed that the Mage Council has been compromised.”
The others nodded and spoke their agreement. “Of course not, my Lord,” the red-haired woman said.
Lord Yeredon picked up a pen and, after a moment’s thought, wrote several lines on a sheet of paper. Starting with the red-haired woman, the Council members each read it over in turn and conferred among themselves in whispers. Lainie longed to know what he had written, but she had a feeling that she was on very fragile ground right now and if there was ever a time to be polite and respectful and not overstep herself, this was it.
The paper came back around to Lord Yeredon. He and the other Council members exchanged silent nods. “A wise approach, my Lord,” one of them said.
Lord Yeredon looked at Lainie again. “The anonymous report we received a year ago last summer mentioned Vendine’s untrained mage companion who was living with him as his wife in an unsanctioned union. We have no specific crimes to charge you with, since you can’t be held responsible for obeying laws you weren’t aware of or for being misled by Vendine, but we have been wanting to have a nice long conversation with you. A small matter of failing to enter an approved school to be trained.”
Oh, damn, Lainie thought. They hadn’t known who she was or what she could do, just that she existed and hadn’t gone to school as the law required, but now she had put herself into their hands, and all for nothing.
“However, Miss, ah –”
“Banfrey.” So they really didn’t know her name. She decided not to argue the point of her marriage for the moment.
“Given the difficulties of this situation, Miss Banfrey,” Lord Yeredon went on, “we will let you go for now so that you can find Venedias and those who captured him. It would not surprise me to learn that this incident is connected to these other matters of which you’ve spoken, since someone seems to be targeting our mage hunters. In exchange, once you’ve found him, you are to return here and report your findings to us in strict confidence.”
It was a trap. Any blind fool could see that. They’d let her find Silas and the people who had captured him, they’d have her do the investigating they didn’t dare do themselves, then when she came back to tell them what she’d found, they would arrest both her and Silas. How stupid did they think she was?
But then, she was the one who had come charging in here.
On second thought, maybe it would be better to let them go on thinking she really was that stupid. “Agreed,” she said, though there was no way in all the hells she was ever coming back to this tower voluntarily. She could write them a letter; that would be confidential and should be good enough to keep her out of trouble with the Mender for the false promise.
“Very well, then. I wish you luck. And, my dear, you are already in enough trouble. I would advise you to be very circumspect regarding the law while you’re searching for Venedias.” He gave her gun a pointed look.
Lainie scooped her money back into the pouches. “I’m going to do whatever it takes to find my husband. If you want to know what’s going on with your council and your hunters, I suggest you stay out of my way. Sir.” She should try to be polite, but there was no way she was going to “My Lord” anybody. She dropped the money pouches back into her pockets and strode from the room, trying to show a confidence that she didn’t come anywhere close to feeling.
Chapter 6
OUTSIDE, LAINIE WAVED down a carriage. It occurred to her that the Mage Council might have her followed, so instead of going straight back to the hotel, she asked the driver to take her to one of the sights that visitors to Sandostra ought to see. He drove her to the Royal Gallery, at the foot of the hill where the palace stood, and she spent an hour or so looking at paintings of Granadaian landscapes and long-dead n
obles before ducking out a side door and hiring another carriage. She made the same request to that driver, and he took her to the Mardavian Islands Historical and Cultural Institute. She spent a longer time there, studying carvings, paintings, and weavings brought from the Islands as well as portraits of famous mages and Island kings and queens. Two of the mages whose portraits hung on the walls were Venediases. She thought she could see a family resemblance to Silas in them.
The driver of the next carriage she hired took her to the National Library. She had never imagined there were so many books in the world, enough to fill hundreds of shelves as high as the ceiling, but her browse revealed that none of them were the kind of exciting romantic novels she liked. After that, at the next driver’s suggestion, she paid a visit to the largest shrine in the city, a round, cavernous building of gray stone with a high domed ceiling. The shrine was filled with candlelight and the scents of burning candles and herbs and cold, slightly damp stone. Statues of fanciful representations of the gods lined the walls between the altars. Lainie made the rounds of the altars of all eight gods, leaving an offering of a gilding and a prayer at each one. At the altar of the Avenger, whose day it was, a priest was leading a large group of worshipers in prayers and chants. Lainie joined in, praying for vengeance against her and Silas’s enemies, whoever they were.
Finally satisfied that she wasn’t being followed, she hired a carriage to take her back to the Bayview. Hours after she had left that morning, she let herself back into her room. The bed was neatly made up; a housekeeper must have come in while she was gone. Silas’s hat still sat on the pillow where she had left it. At the sight of it, all at once Lainie felt utterly defeated. Her tour of the city and her concerns about being followed had kept her emotions at bay, but now worry, fear, and loneliness crashed down on her like a landslide. She was supposed to have Silas with her when she came back to this room and everything was supposed to be all right again. Instead, she didn’t know where he was, or who had taken him or why, or what was happening to him now, or if he was even still alive.