From there….
Well. Step by step.
I left Keel by the fire with a nod and climbed the stairs, magelight guiding my way. I passed, once again, the cloth-covered easel on the second level. I was as utterly uninterested in the Telemarch’s artistic endeavors then as I had been when Amra and I had first climbed the stairs to his inner sanctum.
I stopped off at the library on the third floor and took a book at random from the dusty shelves, not bothering to look at the title, if it even had one. Most of them did not. It didn’t matter. If I did not read to distract myself before sleep, I wouldn’t sleep. Facts and suppositions and memories and plans and fragments of plans would parade themselves endlessly across the stage of my mind, and soon enough it would be dawn and I would not have slept a wink. I could function without it, but I would never be sure I was as sharp as I needed to be. Especially if I needed to cast a spell extemporaneously.
Magic was an unforgiving art, and failure due to inattention could mean sudden death; mine or others’. That much Yvoust, my master, had beaten into me early. He hadn’t been wrong in that, though he had been in too much else.
I went to ‘bed’ in the inner sanctum, as I had every night since Amra had vanished. Keel may have felt uncomfortable there, but I found it peaceful. I hardened the magelight, propped myself in a corner and started to read what seemed to be a treatise on the measurement of time, written by some dead Gosland philosopher. It was all rubbish and nearly impenetrable, which was exactly what I needed.
I got almost two solid hours of sleep. Hurvus would not have been happy with me. I forgot to remove the patch.
Four
“Mag—uh, Holgren, there’s a bunch of soldiers downstairs,” Keel told me. “Again.”
“The same as yesterday?” I asked, not really paying attention. I was working out a trap for whichever rift-spawn we could corner. Lacking basics such as paper, ink, or pen, I was writing in the air, the silvery notations visible only to my magesight. Likely I looked mad to Keel, but he didn’t comment.
“No, these ones are mercenaries. They’ve got four iron chests. They look heavy. Say they’re from the bank.”
“Ah. Yes. I’ll be right there.” I hardened my notes and stepped out of the chamber. Keel was looking pensive.
“What is it, Keel?”
“Promise you won’t get mad?”
“No. But I promise I won’t kill you. What?”
“Are you crazy?”
“No more so than any mage, and far less than many I have met.”
“That’s not really comforting.”
“I’m sorry, I thought you wanted truth, not comfort.”
“Before I met Amra, I’d never met anyone with power like you and Magister Greytooth have. I guess I don’t know what’s normal for you lot.”
“What I’m going to attempt isn’t what you would call normal, any more than the civil war tearing your city apart is normal for Bellarius. Both situations are born of circumstance and desperation. You should judge them accordingly.”
He thought about that for a second. Nodded. “Well, at least you’ve got magic,” he said.
“Keel, I’ll tell you a secret that only Amra knows: I detest being a mage.”
He gave me a look that said he was now convinced I was insane. “But you are really good at it. Really, really good. Scary good.”
“How would you know that? You’ve only seen me fail.”
“First, because Amra told me so. Second, because I heard about what you did to Fisk. Third, I was there yesterday morning when Steyner’s man tried to bash his way in. If you aren’t powerful, I don’t think I know what the word means. And I really don’t see how anybody can not like having power.”
“Some people are masters of arithmetic. Doesn’t mean they want to spend their time doing long division.”
“But we aren’t talking about numbers. We’re talking about magic! Power!”
“All power comes at a price,” I told him, but he shook his head.
“You don’t agree?”
“From what I’ve seen, it’s the powerless that pay while the powerful do whatever they want.” The bitterness in his voice was unusual, for him. But I did not press. Besides, he wasn’t wrong from where he was standing.
“Well, let’s go down and receive my delivery,” I said.
“What have they got?”
“Another kind of power.”
#
Perrick Leed was wearing pale yellow this time, and had traded his tri-cornered had for what looked like a velvet sack. But then I knew as much about fashion as I did about the Emperor of Chagul’s favorite aunt.
“Magister Leed. You’ll have to introduce me to your tailor,” I said by way of greeting, and he smiled politely.
“Magister Angrado, good morning. May we enter?”
“Of course,” I said, and brought down the wards and moved aside so that they could haul in four iron casques, each with an imposingly large lock.
“If I could impose upon you gentlemen to bring them upstairs?” I said to the armsmen. There were a few grimaces, but no muttering. The bank must have been paying them well. They were a mixed lot; Camlachers, Lucernans, Nine Cities men. I wondered where Leed had hired them from, and asked as much.
“Bellaria is at war with itself,” he replied. “Such conflict draws mercenaries. You’ll find a ready pool of them, wharfside, and many more at Jedder.”
“Jedder?”
“A small town half a day’s sail south, beyond the marsh,” he explained as we climbed the stairs to the second floor. “Those who do not have an inclination to fight for the rebels wait there to be hired by the would-be Syndics. Those who prefer the rebel’s cause, or knew no better before taking ship, end up wharfside here in Bellarius.”
“Just set them against the wall, if you would,” I told the armsmen, and they complied. Then they retreated back downstairs, leaving only Leed, Keel and myself in the dusty second floor of the Citadel.
“I very much regret to inform you that Vulkin and Bint was able to accede to your request only in half-measure, magus.”
I raised my eyebrows. “Explain, please.”
“By this time tomorrow the bank will have ceased operations completely in Bellarius, owing to the instability that currently holds sway. It is an indelible stain on the honor of the bank that they could not honor your letter of credit completely, and in recognition of the fact, they have reduced their transaction fee by one half of one per cent.”
“I would say that their regret was boundless, but….”
Leed had nothing to say to that.
“Is there something I should sign, magister?” I asked him.
“Of course. After you’ve counted the coin, sir.”
“I’m certain that won’t be necessary.”
“Sadly, I must disagree with you, magus. Vulkin and Bint does love its procedures, and abhors any anomalies regarding them. I would be let go in an instant were you not to count the coin in my presence and confirm that all is as it should be.”
I sighed. “Very well, Magister Leed. I wouldn’t want to be the cause of any disturbing anomalies.”
Keel snickered, and I gave him a questioning glance.
“Do mages always talk like that when they get together?” he asked.
“Like what?”
“Like there’s a prize for whoever uses the fanciest word.”
Leed gave a slight smile. I considered the question.
“Pretty much,” I finally decided, and turned to Leed. “The keys, sir?”
#
So there it was; twenty chains of Lucernan mint. Twenty thousand marks. I signed and Leed and his entourage departed.
“Holgren?”
“Yes, Keel?”
“That’s a shit-ton of money.”
“Yes it is.” Though it should have been more.
“What are you going to do with it?”
“Some of it goes to Moc Mien to keep you from getting knifed b
y his crew while we’re in Bellarius. A bit more goes to him for arranging transport out of Bellarius. A lot more goes to him for assisting me in trapping a rift-spawn.”
“You don’t need twenty large for that,” Keel said.
“Correct.” Most I would keep on hand in the event I needed to buy my own army. I sincerely hoped it would not come to that. I scooped up a double handful of marks and handed it to him.
“First, find and hire two armsmen who can be trusted.”
“How do I know if they can be trusted?”
I smiled. “I trust your judgment.” I’d also be putting them under a Compulsion. “One stays here, one follows you everywhere.”
“I can take care of myself.”
“Did your arm heal itself while I wasn’t looking? You need a bodyguard, Keel. Bellarius is far from safe, and I’ve already made an enemy of one of the warring factions. You will be a target.”
“All right,” he said, not liking it. “What else?”
“Go to Moc Mien and tell him to come see me to collect his fee. After that, find us a housekeeper who can cook and can be trusted, and send them to me, here. Then order some decent furniture for all of us, and get a tailor for you and I. Have them come this evening. I also want a fisherman’s net, as strong and big as you can find. Better make it two. Do you need to write this down?”
“No. Can’t write anyway. Or read, for that matter.”
“We’ll have to rectify that at some point, but there’s no time now. What else? Best if the housekeeper is male or a very old woman. Everyone will be staying at the Citadel for the duration of our stay, and since there’s a distinct lack of privacy here I don’t want to bother putting up partitions. We’ll likely be leaving in a few days. Which reminds me. See if there are any ships for sale.”
“You want to buy a boat? I thought you said—”
“Not a boat. A ship. They’re generally much bigger than boats. And I have no intention of buying one. I just want those who are bound to be watching my every move to have something to report.”
“All right. Does it matter what kind of ship you aren’t buying?”
“I’m not sure yet. Find out what’s available, and then we’ll discuss it.”
“Anything else?”
“Yes. How are you passing back and forth between the Girdle and the gentry-controlled portion of the city?”
“Sneakily.”
“That will no longer do, after today. Like it or not, I am now a power in Bellarius. You, as my representative, cannot be skulking about. It will lessen my honor and my status.”
He looked at me as though I’d suddenly started speaking Chagul.
“I’m completely serious. There’s no chance any of the factions will learn to love me in the brief time I’ll be here, so that leaves fear.”
“Love? Fear? Status? You said we’re probably leaving in a few days, but you’re talking like you want to rule this place.”
“We are in the middle of a three-cornered civil war, Keel. We are in possession of the Citadel, the only physical symbol of authority left in this midden of a city, since Amra pulled down the Riail. You know very well what I want, and it isn’t to become a despot. But the three factions assume we are a fourth, I guarantee you, and it won’t matter what I say to the contrary. So I won’t bother.”
“All right, I guess I can understand that. But why not just ignore them until your business is finished?”
“I would do just that, if there was any hope they would return the favor. There isn’t. You saw that yesterday. If I was content to stay in the Citadel, it wouldn’t matter, but we have business in the city below, and so we must play the part.” As much of a stupid, monotonous waste of time, energy and money as it would be.
“Yeah, but what part, exactly? I’m still not clear on that.”
“I will play the part of a dangerous, inscrutable archmage whose motives are unknown, but undoubtedly dark and arcane. And dangerous. And inscrutable. You will play the role of my trusted servant, who speaks with my voice.” I looked him over. “Hmm. You’ll probably need a haircut to manage that. Add a barber to the list. Also a cobbler. Your big toe is sticking out.”
“You look pretty shaggy yourself.”
“Shaggy?”
“It sounds nicer than ‘homeless.’”
“Fine, send a barber and a cobbler up for both of us, then. Go, the day isn’t getting younger.”
He turned to go, then turned back.
“You need a symbol.”
“Come again?”
“If you’re going to play the part of a power. You need a symbol.”
“I do?”
“Absolutely. The Gentry all have their heraldry nonsense. Even the crews have got their versions of `em. If you want to mark your territory or your property, you have to have a mark. It’ll be expected, Holgren. Seriously.”
“All right. What do you suggest?”
“You remember that one thing you tried, where fire shot out of all the windows and almost cooked me along the way?”
“I already apologized for that.”
“People are still talking about that in the Girdle. Not me getting burned up, of course; how would they know about that? But they’re still talking about the night the Citadel burned.”
“And?”
“They think that’s when the Telemarch died. Your symbol should be a burning tower. If you’re serious about making people think they should be scared of you.”
“That’s… that’s not a terrible idea actually. I’ll work on it. You get going.”
#
Keel was gone for perhaps an hour before my first visitors of the day announced themselves by trying to break down the front door with cannon fire. I knew I would not be left in peace; still, it was disheartening to be proven right so quickly.
I felt the intense, if fleeting, pressure on the wards at the same time I heard the hollow boom of the cannon ball striking them.
“Imbeciles,” I said aloud and got up from the table where I’d been working on Keel’s burning tower badges. I opened the door.
In the street below, Steyner’s halberdiers were back, this time joined by a three-man cannon crew. They were wearing the emerald and jet of Isinglas mercenaries. I couldn’t see the cockade they wore that would tell me which free company they served. Not that it mattered.
They had a short, stubby little bronze perrier that was still smoking. They were perhaps twenty yards away, and a few of the halberdiers had obviously been struck by shrapnel when the stone ball had shattered against the wards and then been flung away at high velocity. Two men were screaming. A third wasn’t, his head being mostly gone. The idiot captain in half-plate was, sadly, unharmed.
I stepped outside, waited until I caught the captain’s attention, then said “I warned you.”
Then I summoned up my well and disincorporated him. Or, as Keel would have put it, I made him go ‘splat.’
I do not kill lightly. I take no enjoyment from it. But I have no qualms about ending a life. Life is cheap, cheaper than it ought to be, perhaps. But it is what it is, and there isn’t a mage alive that would countenance the sort of disrespect the fool had shown by assaulting my sanctum. Most would have slaughtered every man present, but I had made my point, and was content.
I have never claimed to be a good person. I’m not. But I do try not to be more monstrous than is necessary. If I’d wanted to, I could have tapped into one of the many lethal traps the Telemarch had sown throughout the city. I’d found a dozen, and there were more. There was one almost directly under them. The ground would have turned to acid beneath their feet. Any who managed to survive and flee would have been pursued by corrosive tendrils.
The Telemarch had been a nasty piece of work, with a nasty turn of mind.
I considered telling the others not to come back, but that seemed pointless. Either they would or they wouldn’t and telling them was far less effective than showing them. Finally I just shrugged to myself and went back
inside.
#
My second caller was a big, beefy sailor, his thinning hair pulled back in a club. He only had one hand. If he noticed the remains of Steyner’s captain on the way up, he said nothing.
“Magister Holgren, then?”
“Yes?”
He tugged on an imaginary forelock with an imaginary hand and said “Name’s Marl. I’ve come to cook and keep house.”
“Keel told you the position’s requirements?”
“Aye. Marketing, cooking, cleaning. I’m to lodge here. The position will likely be temporary.”
“Come in then, master Marl.” He entered, and I sat at the table. When I invited him to do the same he declined. I asked him a little about his background, learned he had been a navy man until he’d lost a hand in a boarding action, and that he had no family to speak of. I liked him well enough, and it seemed he could tolerate me.
“Keel explained the basics,” I concluded. “I’ll let you know the finer points. Then you can decide whether you still want the position.”
“As you say, Magus.”
“You’re well aware the city is unstable. Many think I wish to become its ruler, or hope to use me to make them ruler. Anyone who serves me should be aware that this means they may be targets, for those hoping to extract information if nothing else.”
“People might try to pump me for information, or worse. I understand.”
“You’ll be doing the marketing, so you will be in danger. Keel is also hiring armsmen. One will accompany you whenever you leave the Citadel.”
“All right.”
“I will lay two spells on you. The first is a Compulsion not to betray any secrets you may learn while in my employ. This Compulsion is voluntary; you have to agree to it. The second spell is simple tracking magic; if someone takes you or you get into trouble, I’ll know where you are and can come collect you. These two spells are non-negotiable requirements of your employment. Are you agreeable?”
“Will they hurt?”
“Not in the slightest.”
“Will they let you read my mind?”
“Not a single stray thought.”
“How much is the pay, Magus? Your boy was somewhat vague about that. He said ‘at least double whatever you’re making now.’”
The Thief Who Wasn't There Page 4