‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ Reichis asked.
A bell chimed and sound erupted from inside the massive tower. Soon hundreds of students would come rushing out, off to wherever it was students went after class hours. Some of them would have the obsidian worms buried inside their eyes and not even know it, attributing their symptoms to a passing fever, unaware of what now lived inside them.
Poor Beren. He’d built this place to be a beacon of hope and peace – a place where children from all over the continent would come not just to study their chosen subjects but to learn about the Seven Sands and its people, to find common ground with them and maybe one day support their bid for sovereignty when they returned to their own countries. But whoever Dexan was working for meant for the students to take something else home with them. ‘Tyne kept saying that whenever he had an attack someone was listening to him, but I think what he really meant was that they were listening through him.’
‘So Dexan could use the worms to spy on the families of the victims even in their own homes?’ Reichis let out a whistling sound through his teeth. ‘You could do a lot with all that information.’
I nodded. ‘It gets worse. Remember how they used Revian as an anchor? They cast those ember spells through him, even though that entire house was protected with copper and silver wards.’
‘So the kids whose worms are hidden by Dexan’s spell … when they go back to their own countries …’
‘They’ll become spies on their own people. Maybe even assassins.’
Reichis gave a low growl. ‘So what do we do?’
‘The bracelet – the one Dexan made when he put the worm inside Ferius – he must have others, one for each victim. If we can find his real hideout, we can get the bracelets and destroy them so that he can’t use the worms any more.’
‘Okay,’ Reichis said. ‘But he’s been smart enough to keep his lair hidden from us so far.’
I let my need rise up inside me again, and whispered to the sasutzei spirit in my right eye, pleading with her for guidance. This is what my life had come to: I was now begging my own eyeballs for help, and even that didn’t feel strange. The strands from the obsidian worms appeared before me again, but I could see many of them glistening brighter, all leading in same direction. ‘I think I can track him now.’
‘Great, so then we just need to somehow get past a crocodile to beat a guy who just kicked our asses so badly that the only reason we aren’t dead is because he didn’t care enough to kill us.’
I shook my head. ‘Last time I did it wrong. I tried to beat him at magic, but he’s too strong for me.’
‘So then what?’
I grinned down at the squirrel cat. ‘How do you feel about a little burglary job?’
We followed the glistening black threads that the sasutzei revealed to us to a set of caves hidden in the hills outside of town. It made sense, now that I was there: those caves were probably where he’d found the onyx he needed for the bracelets. They probably also had a lot of iron deposits, which would make it hard for hextrackers to find him here. Then again, since they already had, it no longer mattered how well hidden he was.
Reichis and I crept up the path and then all around the caves that led into Dexan’s home until we were sure we’d accounted for all the possible entrances and exits.
‘Ready, partner?’ I asked as we prepared to go in.
He hopped up on my shoulder. ‘You know, Kellen, I’m pretty sure you’re about to get us killed in a bid to save Ferius and a bunch of strangers even though the odds are terrible.’
‘Yeah? So what?’
I felt something odd and furry against my cheek. Reichis – Reichis – was nuzzling me. ‘So I’m starting to think that maybe you’re all right, kid.’
48
The Heist
‘Almost there …’ Reichis said, carefully rotating the lock’s small wheels.
‘You said that already. Six times.’
He glanced over at me from where he stood on his hind legs so he could reach the lock that held the back entrance to Dexan’s lair. ‘You really want to do this again?’
‘Sorry,’ I said.
Reichis resumed his work. I’d laid a circle of copper wire on the ground around us to counteract any warning charms that might have been inscribed onto the lock. I figured as long as we kept it in the circle, the spell shouldn’t be able to reach Dexan.
Eventually Reichis got the lock open, and we left it within the wire.
With the door open, I was about to go in when I felt Reichis tug on my trouser leg. ‘What?’ I asked.
He pointed with one paw near the floor just inside the entrance. At first I couldn’t see anything, but when I knelt down to squirrel-cat height I could just barely make out the thin wire running from one side of the doorway to the other. ‘Tripwire,’ Reichis explained, and hopped over it into the dark space beyond. After a few seconds he called out, ‘Hey, Kellen, you should see this. Kind of a clever trap. There are actually six different wires running across the floor, and if you trigger any one of them, a small lever turns a pulley connected to a large—’
‘Can you disable it?’
A pause. ‘Well, sure, but don’t you want to hear how it works? I mean, it’s pretty cool the way the blade will just take your head off and all.’
‘Maybe next time,’ I said.
‘Your loss.’
A few minutes later I heard a crashing sound that nearly gave me a heart attack. ‘Reichis?’
‘What?’ he asked, poking his head out the door.
‘What was that?’
‘A big mother of an eight-foot-long steel blade crashing to the floor. What did you think it was?’
I followed him inside, fumbling around until I found a glow-glass ball suspended near one of the walls. I set my will on it, and after a second or two managed to get a somewhat pathetic but still helpful amount of light.
‘Nice place,’ Reichis said.
He wasn’t kidding. What should have been a dank cave turned out to be an extremely large and elegant open room with polished marble floors and walls reminiscent of a Jan’Tep sanctum. Large display cases stood in various spots around the space, filled with books and charms and any number of interesting artefacts. A door in one wall led to a bathroom. Reichis, of course, was immediately entranced by the tub. ‘Will you look at this thing? It’s huge.’ He started fiddling with a tap on one side. ‘Running water too.’ He hopped back off the edge of the bath and followed the copper pipe to a small wood stove. ‘Hey, fire this up for me, would you, Kellen?’
‘Are you serious? We’re on a heist here, Reichis, and you want to take a bath?’
The squirrel cat started sniffing around the room. ‘Not unless I can find some butter biscuits, I don’t.’
‘Come on,’ I said. ‘Let’s find the onyx bracelets he uses to control the worms. After that I promise I’ll buy you all the butter biscuits you can eat.’
‘Deal,’ Reichis said, then added more quietly, ‘sucker.’
As we began searching the vast room with all its curios and furnishings, I became confounded by the fact that Dexan – someone I would have expected to be constantly on the move – had created something so … permanent for himself.
‘Any luck?’ I asked Reichis.
He glanced back at me from where he was hanging off the top of one of the glass cases. ‘There’s kind of a lot of ground to cover here, Kellen. What about asking that thing in your eye?’
I shook my head. I’d tried several times since we got here but the sasutzei wasn’t responding. Maybe some of Dexan’s own wards interfered with it somehow. I rubbed at my right eye and felt nothing there. I’d probably asked it for help so many times on the way here that the spirit had got bored and abandoned me entirely.
‘What about one of those Jan’Tep magical whammy things?’ Reichis asked.
I almost laughed. ‘When have you ever seen me successfully cast a seeking spell?’
Reichis went b
ack to rifling through the shelves and grumbled, ‘I can dream, can’t I?’
We kept searching for an hour, making rather a mess of Dexan’s palatial home, when all of a sudden the glow-glass ball I was carrying to illuminate the room flickered out.
‘Hey, a little light here?’ Reichis said.
Unfortunately I couldn’t make the glow-glass ignite again. Worse, I was pretty sure I knew why. I looked down at the red mark on my palm and felt the sting of Dexan using it to block my magic.
‘I told you the charm would go away by itself in a couple of days,’ Dexan himself said, stepping into the room. ‘If you’d just waited until then, you might have had a chance.’
I started to reach for powder from the pouches at my belt, but stopped myself when the burning in my palm increased.
‘Oh, you’re not going to start with that again, are you?’ Dexan asked. He sighed theatrically. ‘You know, it’s hard to believe, but even after all the nonsense you’ve put me through, I still can’t quite get myself to hate you, Kellen.’
‘That’s nice,’ Reichis chittered, climbing up another of the cases to gain the height he’d need to glide down and attack. ‘Tell him the feeling ain’t mutual.’
‘Unfortunately,’ Dexan went on, ‘I really can’t allow you to keep breaking the first rule though.’
I reached into my pockets and took out some of Ferius’s steel playing cards. At least those Dexan couldn’t interfere with.
‘Should’ve become my apprentice when you had the chance, Kellen,’ Dexan said. He made a simple somatic shape with his right hand, and this time I could see the slight shimmer of the onyx bracelet around his wrist. The sounds of thick claws at the end of four short legs clacked against the marble floor, along with the rustling of a heavy tail being dragged behind.
‘Great,’ Reichis said. ‘He brought the damned crocodile.’
49
The Fight
‘You know what your problem is, kid?’ Dexan said as he approached, his massive crocodile lumbering close behind.
‘Bad timing?’
He shook his head. ‘Self-deception.’
‘How do you figure?’
His hand formed the somatic shape for the lightning needles I’d seen him use on Revian’s house mage. I had no idea what it felt like to be hit by those and no desire to find out. He could sense my discomfort. ‘You keep fooling yourself into believing you can be someone other than a spellslinger, Kellen, but that’s who you are. It’s what we both are! Exiles. Outcasts. We’ve got our little scraps of magic and our wits and that’s it. When you forget that – when you let yourself believe you can join the Argosi or fall in love with some rich girl and move in with her and her papa – you lose the one advantage you have.’
‘Which is?’
‘Knowing how the world really works.’
He took another step closer, his hand still holding the somatic shape even as the onyx bracelet on his wrist shimmered again. The crocodile opened its mouth and let out a hissing sound that made my guts go cold.
Reichis and I had spent most of the climb into the hills discussing how we might deal with the beast. Two possibilities had presented themselves, neither of which were particularly promising. In the end it was Reichis who’d made the decision between the two.
I backed away. Quickly. ‘You’re wrong, Dexan. I might be an outcast like you, but that’s not all I have to be.’
He shook his head in disgust. ‘Look at you! Seconds from meeting your own death and yet you’re still refusing to face the fact that this – right here –’ he spread his arms to gesture at the surroundings – ‘this is the best somebody like you or me can hope for. A little money, a nice place, maybe some comfort, at least until our own people hunt us down and take it away from us.’
‘That’s a pretty lonely existence,’ I said, retreating.
‘That’s the life of a spellslinger, Kellen. People either want to kill us or use us as tools. That girl you like? Even if you could cure her, all that would do is make her leave you behind. Why would someone like that want to be with an outlaw spellslinger cursed with the shadowblack? And that woman? Ferius? She’s an Argosi, Kellen. They’re loners, every one of them. Sure, she’ll let you follow her around for a while, but then that “path” of hers? Well, it’ll take her to places you don’t want to go, and when it does, she’ll walk right out of your life and you’ll never see her again.’ He gave a chuckle. ‘Damn, kid, you don’t even have a proper familiar. Just a squirrel cat who probably steals everything he can get his paws on.’
‘Got that right,’ Reichis chittered.
Suddenly something small and shiny hurtled through the air towards Dexan, letting out a high-pitched chime as it struck his forehead. It was the bell from the charm we’d tried to buy.
The distraction was just enough for me to get one steel card thrown. I’d aimed for Dexan’s neck, which was a bad idea since it wasn’t a big target. Still, the card sliced his cheek and I got a loud yell for my troubles. Then he set the crocodile on me.
As the creature advanced, I scrambled backwards, readying myself for what Reichis had dubbed ‘the bloody-tongue manoeuvre’. Just as the crocodile opened its jaws, I flung one of Ferius’s steel cards into its mouth. The first one missed, clacking against the brute’s teeth only to fall to the floor, but I fired off a second one and that one went right inside. Instinctively, the creature bit down, and gave a roar as the sharp steel edges bit into the soft flesh of its mouth.
Dexan was only momentarily distracted, his fingers went back into the somatic shape of the lightning-needles spell. He opened his mouth to utter the incantation, and I knew I was a few syllables away from a rather unpleasant end.
Reichis leaped down from his perch on the glass case, limbs spread wide so that the furry membranes of his glider wings blocked Dexan’s view. The squirrel cat wrapped his paws and feet around Dexan’s face, clawing into him to hang on.
The crocodile was snapping its jaws open and closed, trying to dislodge the card. I didn’t have long before the creature would give up on that endeavour and turn his attention to me, but in the meantime I raced past it and made a running leap for Dexan. ‘Reichis, now!’ I shouted.
The squirrel cat sprang away just as I tackled Dexan to the floor. It felt almost satisfying to be on the attack for once, instead of just being the guy who gets beaten up all the time. But Dexan was a foot taller than me and a good fifty pounds heavier. Within seconds he’d managed to throw me off, and I landed hard against one of the display cases, sending it toppling to the floor, the glass doors shattering into thousands of pieces.
‘You stupid little ingrate!’ he spat, getting to his feet. ‘You think just because I’m a spellslinger I don’t know how to fight?’
I scrambled to my feet. ‘Oh, I’m sure you know how to wrastle,’ I said, ‘but me, I’m more of a dancer these days.’ I held out my hand and showed him what I’d taken from him.
Dexan glanced at his wrist and saw the onyx bracelet he used to control the crocodile was gone. He made a grab for me, but I ducked low and came up on the other side of him, tossing the bracelet to Reichis, who leaped up and caught it in his teeth. The crocodile, mad with confusion and rage, now freed from Dexan’s control, came after all of us.
‘Are you sure about this, Reichis?’ I asked again, preparing to throw another card at the creature’s mouth. I doubted it would fall for that twice.
‘He’s mine!’ Reichis growled, leaping onto the crocodile’s head and grabbing onto the ridges with his claws.
Squirrel cats really don’t like losing a fight, and Reichis is especially prone to acts of revenge. As the crocodile began to flip over to shake off his unwanted guest, Reichis leaped off. The crocodile tried to snap its teeth at him, and in that instant Reichis threw the bracelet into the beast’s mouth.
The crunch of the bracelet shattering inside the massively powerful jaws was followed by the creature suddenly halting its frantic movements. The black swirling ins
ide its eyes stopped and the beast stared at us, gaze clear for the first time. I wasn’t sure what to expect then, whether it would die or perhaps still be just as wild. What Reichis had theorised, and I’d hoped, was that the beast, once free of the magic controlling it, would turn its attention to the man who’d made it suffer for so long.
For once we got lucky.
The crocodile started scrambling along the marble floor towards Dexan, who ran backwards while frantically grabbing for something inside his pocket. Suddenly he pulled out what looked like a small glass figurine which he crushed in his hand, grimacing from the pain of the glass cutting into his palm. The crocodile collapsed on the floor. Blood began to drip out of its eyes and mouth.
‘That’s the difference between you and me, Kellen,’ Dexan said, wiping the tiny slivers of glass from his hand. ‘We’re both spellslingers, we’re both wily, but I’ve been at this a lot longer than you. Did you think I wouldn’t have prepared something just in case I lost control of the beast?’ He raised both his hands and thin tendrils of blue lightning slithered around his fingers.
‘There’s something else that makes us different, Dexan: I have …’
I didn’t get to finish my sentence because at that moment Dexan dropped like a stone, unconscious. Behind him, Ferius, with Seneira at her side, stood over him and slowly closed her extendable metal rod. ‘Oh, I’m sorry, kid,’ she said. ‘Were you going to say something?’
‘Yeah.’ I knelt to let Reichis clamber up my arm to my shoulder then walked over to Ferius and Seneira. ‘I was going to say that the difference between me and Dexan is that I have friends.’
Ferius gave me that smirk of hers. ‘Friends, eh? So why did you take off without us like that?’
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