The Emperor's Mask (Magebreakers Book 2)

by Ben S. Dobson

  And there were two signs here she couldn’t ignore.

  First, a splintered hole punched through the wooden folding screen—the size of an ancryst pistol-ball, she estimated—and second, a coin-sized pool of fluid at the foot of the desk that she feared at first was blood in the colorless tones of her dark-sight. Her nose quickly corrected her when she bent closer. Ink. Someone had fired an ancryst pistol, and Carver’s inkwell had been spilled. The pistol shot might have come from an attacker, or from Indree if she’d been there—it wasn’t out of place at the scene of a struggle. Kadka could account for it.

  It was the ink that bothered her.

  There wasn’t enough of it, for one thing. If the inkwell had just been tipped off the desk, there should have been more. And where was the bottle? She crouched to look under the desk again, peeked behind the screen, checked every corner of the room. Nothing.

  But there was another droplet of ink on the floor just inside the door. And that was when she knew.

  Carver had been taken.

  The ink hadn’t been spilled by accident. Someone had come for him, and he’d somehow secreted the bottle on his person to leave a trail. It was a leap, but it was just the sort of thing he would have done. She was certain of it.

  He’d been taken just when she hadn’t been there to protect him. She should have been, but she hadn’t. And a sick weight settled in Kadka’s stomach when she realized just who was responsible for that.

  No. She pushed the suspicion aside. Follow the trail first, and then she’d know more. She raced out the door, skidded to a halt in the street, looked both ways.

  There. A spattering of dark ink stains leading up the right side of the road. Kadka followed.

  Carver must have been carrying the inkwell in his pocket, letting the ink filter through the fabric of his clothes to keep it from draining all at once. Still, though, it wouldn’t last forever. The trail didn’t continue far up the road, and she worried the ink had run out too soon—or that whoever had taken Carver had noticed it. But a quick circle found the next dab on the ground to her right.

  It led into the alley she’d met Vladak in earlier. Toward the abandoned maintenance tunnels. She hadn’t noticed the ink spots on her way back, had been too distracted to notice much of anything. But there they were. And she didn’t like what that suggested.

  She followed the trail, a drop here and there leading her along nearly the same route Vladak had. Another splatter just before the metal plate that covered the access to the tunnels. She passed by, checked further down, hoping, but there was nothing. Kadka returned to the plate, knelt, and heaved it aside. A dark smear ran down one side of the ladder, ending just below the second rung.

  This was the way, then. No doubting it now.

  At the bottom of the ladder, the ink spots led her down the passage opposite the one she and Vladak had taken before, and she followed the trail through dark tunnels. Here and there she had to check down several passages before she found another droplet, and they were thinning out, getting further between. And then, after perhaps a quarter hour, she lost the trail altogether.

  But not because the ink ran out.

  There was a dark splatter on the floor in front of her, a clear sign that Carver had been taken this way. But it was a dead end. The passage terminated in a solid wall.

  “Deshka!” she cursed, and slammed a fist against the brick. She didn’t think they’d doubled back. Maybe, but she hadn’t seen any signs in other directions. No, it had to be a secret way. Like the ones the Silver Dawn used. Kadka started prodding bricks at random, twisting bolts on the steel supports, but she had no idea where to start. And even if she got lucky here, there could well be other closed passages waiting ahead.

  But there was someone who might know the way. And if he didn’t have the answers she wanted…

  Her fingers clenched around her knife, and she turned back the way she’d come.

  Another thing she’d learned in the Svernan wilderness was an unerring sense of direction. She remembered the way Vladak had taken her easily enough, traced the route back to the hidden passage, turned the wheel on the sealed hatch, prodded the brick that popped out with her foot. The low door swung open, and Kadka ducked through into the great sealed disc tunnel.

  Iskar was still inside, bent over some papers on a desk at the center of the tunnel, silver wings folded at his back. Alone, just like she’d left him. The others hadn’t stayed, only come to report and meet Kadka and then gone on their way.

  He looked up when she entered, and revealed draconian teeth in an open-snouted smile. “Kadka. What brings you—”

  She crossed the distance in an instant, knife in hand. Grabbed him by the throat, lifted him from his seat. “Carver is gone. Someone takes him into these tunnels, while I am with you. Where is he?”

  Iskar didn’t struggle, though the muscle beneath those silver scales might have been a match for her. He didn’t even flinch, just looked at her steadily with those luminous blue eyes. “I don’t know. I swear to you, I had nothing to do with it.”

  Kadka tightened her grip, pressed the point of her knife against his ribs. “Who else knows I will be gone? And you keep me here meeting people, longer than I mean to stay. Carver says I trust you too easily, and now he is gone, when I… I should have…”

  “Mister Carver… must have had defenses on the office.” Somehow, Iskar remained calm, though his voice wheezed through a half-closed throat. “Wards. How would… one of us get in? And why?”

  That was true. Carver didn’t always have the office wards up, but he’d been paranoid about the Mask of late—he wouldn’t have made himself easy to take. But if the Knights of the Emperor had infiltrated the Silver Dawn… “Mask walks through wards before. Maybe Carver’s too. Maybe you send him.” She relaxed her fingers slightly to let Iskar answer.

  “And let you go, after showing you the way to find me? I understand that you’re worried for your friend, but think clearly about this. Would I have betrayed you and then waited here alone, unguarded? I don’t know anything about the Mask, Kadka. I’m not the one you’re looking for. But I can help you. I know these tunnels.”

  He was making sense. And she still wanted to trust him. Wanted to believe she hadn’t been completely fooled by the man who had taken her friend. “I…” She released him, pulled back her blade. “I am sorry. Is only… I should be with him when Mask comes, not here. Say some things, before I go…” She swallowed, shook her head. “Shouldn’t be last things I say to him. Please, help me. I will join Silver Dawn, do what you ask. Anything. Just help.”

  Iskar shook his head, and put a hand on her shoulder. “No bargains. Not while you fear for Mister Carver’s life. That is not our way. If you join us, it will be your choice, made freely. Right now, just tell me what you need.”

  Kadka didn’t waste time. She could thank him properly later. “Trail leads to dead end. Is secret door, I think, but I can’t open.”

  “If there is a door down here, I know it,” said Iskar, and started for the exit. “Come. Let us find your friend.”

  Chapter Twenty

  _____

  TANE WOKE WITH his head in Indree’s lap. She was leaning over him, a look of concern on her face. The room behind her was hazy, and he blinked his eyes, trying to clear them. The floor was hard and cold against his back, and something thick and sticky was drying against his leg. For a terrifying moment he feared it was blood, and then he remembered the inkwell in his pocket.

  “Tane? Thank the Astra, you’re awake.”

  He sat up from her lap. His head spun, but he propped himself up on one arm and managed to keep from collapsing to the ground again. Glancing down, he saw the black stain down the outside of his right leg where the ink had drained. Astra, I hope that gave Kadka something to work with. “How long has it been?” he asked.

  “I don’t know,” said Indree. “Long enough to get us… wherever we are. That gauntlet had a hundred times the kick of the average daze wand.”r />
  “Which wouldn’t be cheap.” Daze wands channeled pure Astral energy through the target’s link to the Astra. They ran through gems quickly, and that was for just a few moments’ incapacitation. “Apparently the Mask can afford to burn a lot of power.” Something prickled at the back of Tane’s mind, there. Not quite clear yet, but enough to set a weight rolling in the pit of his stomach.

  As his vision resolved, he saw that they were in a cell of some kind, bare brick and stone with a metal door. A sliding plate was mounted in the door at eye level. It was closed. There were no windows to the outside. They were prisoners, and he couldn’t see a way out.

  But they were still alive. That was something.

  He got shakily to his feet. “We have to get out of here. The Mask could be going after Faelir Audlian already.”

  Indree stood too. “Believe it or not, I arrived at that conclusion without your help. But I don’t see how.”

  “Do you know where we are?”

  “I only woke up a few minutes before you did. All I’ve seen is the inside of this cell.”

  “What about magic? Can you do anything?”

  Indree shook her head. “I tried. The cell is magically isolated, like the ones at Stooketon Yard. I’m cut off from the Astra.”

  Tane moved to the door, slid open the metal plate, and peered into the room beyond. It didn’t reveal much—there were no particular distinguishing features to identify their location. To his right, a set of stairs led to an upper level, and across the room a plain wooden door went somewhere he couldn’t guess. For all he knew, it was a storage closet.

  “Hey!” he shouted through the small opening. “Can anyone hear me? We need help!”

  “Do you really think it’s going to be that easy?” Indree asked from just behind.

  He shrugged. “Worth a try. Hey! Anybody!”

  “Quiet in there!” A man’s voice from just to the right of the door.

  A figure stepped into view—average height, muscular, probably human, but his face was covered in a black cowl like an executioner’s mask. He was dressed all in black too, with a badge at his breast. A gold crown and staff on a deep purple field. The sigil of the Knights of the Emperor. Tane had seen this before—the same outfit and badge Randolf Cranst and his followers had worn, men and women gathered by Chancellor Nieris in his plot to bring down the airship Hesliar. So there are more of them. Nieris wasn’t lying about that.

  “There’s no point yelling,” the man said gruffly. “The basement is sound-damped. No noise in or out. For the likes of you, anyway.” Presumably the guards were exempted from the spell—they wouldn’t be much use if they couldn’t hear someone coming.

  “What are you going to do with us?” Tane asked. “Why are we here?”

  “No point wasting your breath on questions—there’s no saving you now. Enemies of the Emperor are dealt with by His Mask, and he isn’t known for mercy.” There was a grim satisfaction in the guard’s voice that Tane very much didn’t like.

  But he didn’t let it stop him. “So the Mask is just an enforcer? Who is this Emperor?”

  “That isn’t for the likes of you or me, filth. The unworthy don’t look upon the Emperor. It’s enough that the Mask speaks with his voice. Shut your mouth.”

  “You mean none of you have seen them? You don’t know who they are?” Again, that uncomfortable prickling in the back of Tane’s thoughts. There was something there, something he hadn’t quite grasped yet. “You’re fighting for someone without even—”

  “I said shut up!” The man uttered a short spell in the lingua—apparently he was exempt from the Astral isolation, too—and a sudden silver force shoved Tane away from the door. He landed painfully on his back against the cold stone floor.

  The guard peered in through the opening in the door. “The next time you open this, it will go much worse for you,” he said coldly, and slid the plate closed.

  Indree rushed to Tane’s side. “Are you hurt?”

  “Probably bruised my tailbone, but I’m fine.” Tane got to his feet again with her help.

  “So we’re prisoners of the Knights of the Emperor,” said Indree. “An organization most people don’t think exists. And no one will be looking for us—I didn’t tell Durren where I was, for obvious reasons. I’m not sure how we get out of this.”

  “There’s Kadka,” said Tane. “She’ll be looking.”

  “Will she? You said you argued with her, that she might not want to see you. We don’t even know if she was going to come back to your office.”

  “She’ll come,” Tane said, and he believed it. “I once made the mistake of thinking she wouldn’t, and then she climbed over the side of an airship hundreds of feet above the ground and saved my life. She’ll find us.”

  Indree prodded her cheek with her tongue, and then nodded. “I wouldn’t count her out yet, I suppose.”

  “There’s something else, though,” said Tane. “Why are we even alive for her to find? If the Mask wanted to deal with us, why not kill us at the office? It must have to do with luring us into the investigation to begin with. And how in the Astra could someone have gotten through my wards?”

  “The Mask got through the wards on several Senate houses,” said Indree. “You think yours are better?”

  “Yes,” Tane said without hesitation. “We had a list of people who were exempted from the wards at those estates. My exemptions are me, you, and Kadka. No one else. Which means we’re looking at someone who’s found a way to actually ignore a ward, not just to get on the list. You’d have to be dead already, or at least appear non-sentient to the Astra…” And then the prickling idea that had been forming at the back of his thoughts took shape all at once. “Spellfire, no.”

  Indree raised an eyebrow. “What—”

  Before she could finish, shackles of silver-blue energy shimmered into existence around their wrists and ankles and yanked both of them hard toward the rear of the cell. Tane struggled against it, but in an instant his back was against the wall, his limbs pinned.

  The door swung open, and a figure close to nine feet tall stooped to pass through, draped from head to foot in a black robe. It had no face, only a mouthless brass mask with slits for eyes and a crowned staff etched down the center.

  The Mask turned back to the guard at the cell door. “Leave us.” The voice was deep and distorted, the same one from the illusory messages at the murder scenes. Before the man could respond, a massive brass-gauntleted hand pushed the door closed. The giant figure stood alone before Tane and Indree and looked them up and down, narrow eye-slits glowing faintly from behind with silver-blue light. “Tane Carver. A pleasure to finally meet you properly.”

  Tane held his chin up, tried not to let his voice shake. “We’ve met. Or at least, I’ve met the man speaking through the mask. Or do you prefer ‘The Emperor Who Will Be’?”

  The Mask only regarded Tane silently, but Indree twisted her neck to look at him. “What are you talking about?”

  And Tane knew as he said it aloud that he was right—it was the only thing that made sense. “There’s only one way to get through all those wards and detection spells, including mine. The same reason we needed the crawlers to get access to the Audlian estate. The Mask isn’t a sentient being, Ree. It’s an automaton. A golem. And only one man could make a golem this advanced.”

  Indree’s eyes widened with realization. “Endo.”

  And finally the Mask spoke again in that rumbling, distorted voice. “Very good, Tane.” One hand reached up, palmed the delicately etched mask, pulled it free. Behind, two silver-blue lenses like eyes glowed in the center of a brass face-plate. Metallic irises contracted to adjust for the new light. Just like Endo’s crawlers.

  “Well,” said Tane, “I suppose this means I’m not getting paid.”

  Chapter Twenty-one

  _____

  “TELL ME,” ENDO said in the Mask’s deep, warped voice, “what gave me away? I would like to know what mistake sentenced you to d
eath.”

  If someone had told Tane ten years ago that one day he would feel so betrayed by Endo Stooke, he wasn’t sure if he would have laughed or flown into a rage. And yet here he was. He’d fallen for the act, even started to feel some kinship toward the earnest, brilliant young man. I can’t believe I let him fool me. A decade hating him wasted just because he looked at me wide-eyed and told me how clever I am.

  But whatever he felt, it could wait—right now, he needed to stall for time. Hurry, Kadka. I’m not ready to die just yet.

  Tane’s hands trembled against their shackles, but he kept his voice steady. “There were plenty of clues. The way the Mask passed through wards. The lack of Astral trace at the scenes. The artifacts built with no regard to cost, like your chair and your crawlers. Disappearing with active illusion, the way only a gnome could—or maybe a golem with a gnome in control. I should have seen it sooner. But I didn’t, not until I learned that no one had ever seen the Emperor in person. That’s when things started falling into place. Your followers aren’t the most accepting sort. They wouldn’t take you seriously if they’d seen you in your chair. So you made yourself a stand in.”

  “But why?” Indree demanded. “Why do all this? You killed your own brother.”

  There was no emotion in the automaton’s blue lenses, and the voice was too distorted to read. “Who would believe I was the killer, with him as the first victim? My brother was a necessary sacrifice. The world is out of order. The magical have surrendered too much of their rightful power. That must be remedied.”

  “That’s it?” Tane said. “You’re just a true believer?” He didn’t buy it. He couldn’t help but notice that although Indree was right there beside him, the Mask barely spared her a glance. This feels more personal than he wants to let on. Can I use that? He couldn’t be sure yet—he had to keep playing things out. “Then why drag me and Kadka into this? Why all the taunts?”