The Emperor's Mask (Magebreakers Book 2)

by Ben S. Dobson

  The spell didn’t hold long—each time, the Mask broke free faster as Indree’s endurance ebbed. But it was enough for Kadka and Indree to close the distance. They were only a few yards behind when they reached the stairs themselves.

  This stairway was clearly for the servants and guards, narrower and less impressive than the ones in the foyer. They switched direction at a landing halfway down; as they rounded that corner just behind the Mask, Indree quietly started to mutter the words of a spell.

  Below them, Faelir Audlian ran by the bottom of the stairway, apparently alone. The Mask leapt down the last ten steps in a single bound, raising its spike. Kadka poured on the speed and threw herself after, exiting the stairway into a small servant’s hall that led to the kitchen on her left. To her right, a door onto the grounds had been left open.

  Faelir stumbled away in terror, and then his back was against the wall. The Mask raised its spike, and struck.

  The spike tore through Faelir’s face, pulping skin and crunching bone.

  Desperately, Kadka hurled herself onto the Mask’s back one last time, wrapped one arm around its neck. The Mask ignored her, didn’t resist at all. Its primary goal was to kill its target; nothing else mattered. It drove the spike through Faelir’s head until she heard it strike the wall behind.

  Kadka jammed her knife into the seam at the back of the Mask’s head, and put all her strength against the hilt. The hatch wrenched open, revealing three tightly coiled scrolls of spellwork. She jammed her fist into the hole and tore one free from its copper clasps.

  Beneath her, the golem ceased moving. The faint silver-blue glow of its eyes died, and it dropped heavily to its knees. Kadka leapt free as it collapsed to the floor with a massive crash.

  It was over. They’d done it. They’d broken the Mask.

  Just not the way she’d imagined.

  She looked to the limp body of Faelir Audlian, pinned against the wall on a bloody spike.

  The body shimmered, colors fading into silver. Faelir vanished as the illusion blinked out, leaving only the crowned spike staked into crumbling plaster.

  On the landing above, the sound of Indree’s muttered spell ceased, and she descended the rest of the way to join Kadka. “How’s that for a distraction?” she said.

  Kadka turned to her with a wide, triumphant grin. “Does the job.” She crumpled the glyph-covered scroll in her fist, and let it fall atop the Mask’s massive, motionless frame.

  “Is it over?” Daalia Audlian’s voice, from outside.

  “Not until Endo Stooke is locked up,” Indree answered. “But you’re out of danger.” She and Kadka left the manor through the open door to the grounds.

  Daalia, Saelis, and Faelir huddled together against the wall just outside the door, alive and well. Beyond them, Kadka could see the nighttime lights of the city spread out below the hill where the manor sat—not as impressive as the view from the top of an airship, but still decent.

  Daalia Audlian stood, quickly recovering her dignified bearing. “Endo Stooke? Is that who was behind this? That is… hard to imagine.”

  “Is true,” Kadka said. “Who else builds thing like that?” She pointed through the door, at the great sprawl of the Mask.

  Daalia nodded slowly as she considered that. “An automaton that advanced… I don’t know how you two stopped it. We are in your debt. Anything in my power—”

  A massive, roaring explosion shattered the air, swallowing her voice.

  “Get down!” Indree shouted, and threw herself in front of the Audlians.

  Daalia ducked her head and pressed herself back against the wall as great pillars of silver fire gouted into the air across the darkened city below. The light burned painfully bright against Kadka’s sensitive night vision even from so far away, but still she leapt to join Indree, ready to shield the Audlians with her body.

  But there was nothing to shield them from. The fires were far away, six points of searing silver spread over the city. There was nothing to do but watch them burn. And as the pillars of silver flame reached their full height, a ghostly image of the Mage Emperor’s crowned staff appeared in the sky above each spot, glowing silver-blue against the night sky.

  “What in the Astra…” Indree breathed, looking up at the sigils in horror. “What is this?”

  Kadka didn’t have an answer for that, but she was a good judge of distance and direction. It didn’t take her long to identify the locations: one at Audlian’s Crossing, where protestors gathered before the Brass Citadel; two each in the poorer districts of Porthaven and Greenstone.

  And one more.

  Not terribly far away, a crowned staff floated in the air above Stooketon. A fist of dread closed around Kadka’s heart.

  “Don’t know what it is,” said Kadka, and pointed at the sigil over Stooketon, silver flames burning hungrily below. “But that one is Stooke house. Where Carver went.”

  Chapter Twenty-four

  _____

  BLUECAPS HAD ALREADY surrounded the Stooke’s townhouse by the time Tane got there. Two dozen men and women in blue uniforms and caps had erected a perimeter of glyph-etched brass pylons topped by copper spheres. A barrier of silver-blue energy spanned the gaps between them, shimmering against the dark and blocking anyone without the proper badge from going in or out.

  “They should already be there.” Indree’s voice in his head. She’d sent for backup before they’d parted. Her tone was purposefully brisk—no indication of the fact that they’d kissed less than a quarter hour before. “It’s not far from the Yard.”

  “They are,” Tane sent back. “Already have their pylons set.”

  “Good. Don’t even think about going in after Endo without a good dozen of them in front of you.”

  “I heard you the first five times. I’ll be good.”

  “You’d better be. I expect to see you again when this is done. I have to go now—we’re almost at the Audlian estate. Good luck, Tane.” The pressure died in his ears, and she was gone—very likely to face down the Mask. He tried not to think too hard about all the ways that could go badly. He couldn’t afford to be distracted just now.

  As he approached the townhouse, Tane reached back to tuck his vest over the pistol sitting in the back of his waistband. Indree had given it to him, but he wasn’t certain the other bluecaps would approve. He didn’t much like carrying it, but he had a feeling he was going to need every edge he could get before the night was over.

  A blue-clad ogren woman waved him down as he drew near. “Mister Carver,” she said in a lovely, sonorous voice. “I’m Inspector Vathaa. Inspector Lovial said you’d be coming.” She was large enough that she had to bend at the knee to hand him a brass badge. “This will let you through the perimeter, if need be. I’m glad you’re here. Things have become… complicated.”

  “How so?” Tane asked, pinning the badge to his waistcoat. “Is Endo inside?”

  “He is,” said Inspector Vathaa. “Our divinations confirm two Astral signatures in there: Mister Stooke himself, and his mother. The problem is, he won’t let anyone through the wards, and he’s threatening to harm the senator if we try. I’ve been trying to negotiate, but he’s not responding. And Astrally disassembling the house wards could take hours.”

  Tane raised an eyebrow. “And you think I can do something to help.”

  “I hope so,” Vathaa said. “Just before you arrived, Mister Stooke told me that he would speak to you, and only you. I don’t know what changed, but he seemed to know you’d be here. And from what Inspector Lovial says, I gather you might have some insight into his mindset that I don’t. I’d like you to convince him to let some of us go in with you. If we can get close, we can take him down.”

  Tane shook his head. “Won’t work. He’ll never agree to it.” If Endo wanted him inside, it was for one reason: to settle a very old score. He wouldn’t let the bluecaps get in the way. “But you’re right. Someone has to get in there. And he’ll let me in if I go alone.” Which was exactly what he
’d promised Indree he wouldn’t do.

  But a senator’s life was at stake now. And she knew it had to go this way. She wouldn’t have been so worried about it otherwise.

  “I can’t let you do that, Mister Carver. It’s against protocol, and Chief Durren—”

  “Isn’t here. Look, Ree—Inspector Lovial—was put in charge of this case by the Lady Protector, right? And she brought me on board. I’m not a civilian, I’m a professional consultant. And I know how to deal with Endo.” That was a lie, but he didn’t think the inspector would be checking for those just now. “Right now, the important thing is getting Senator Stooke out of there. If I go in, I might be able to get those wards down for you, if nothing else. Let me help.”

  Vathaa hesitated for a moment, and then nodded her head. “I shouldn’t, but Inspector Lovial did say we should defer to your knowledge of the situation.” She turned to the bluecaps holding the perimeter and raised her voice. “Mister Carver is going in. Let him through.”

  The constables gave her quizzical looks, but stood aside without argument. The badge Vathaa had given him allowed Tane through the perimeter shield, with a hair-raising tingle like passing through a ward. On the inside of the shield, a broad half-circle of empty space surrounded the Stooke’s townhouse. It felt isolated, as if he’d stepped out of phase with the rest of the world. He could still see and hear the bluecaps on the other side, but they were somehow distant now despite their closeness. He was on his own.

  He approached the door, but before he could do anything to signal his presence, he felt the pressure of a sending build in his ears.

  “Tane. You are full of surprises, aren’t you? When my Mask saw your friends arrive at the Audlian estate, I knew you’d be along soon.”

  “Then you must also know we’ve told everyone the truth,” Tane sent back through the open Astral channel. “This is over, Endo. Indree and Kadka are going to stop the Mask, and you can’t hole up in there forever.”

  “We’ll see, won’t we? In the meantime, why don’t you come in and have a friendly chat? After all, we’ve become so close.” The door swung inward. Endo said nothing more, but the pressure in Tane’s ears remained—the channel was still open.

  Tane wasn’t keen on passing into the entry hall—he’d been ambushed by crawlers there once already—but he took a breath and stepped across the threshold. Death by automaton just inside the door was too impersonal. Endo wasn’t going to do anything to him until they were face to face.

  As soon as he was inside, the outer door closed behind him, and the inner one opened into the house proper. “You haven’t seen my workshop, have you?” Endo’s voice sounded in his head. “I think you’ll like it, considering our shared interest in the workings of magecraft. End of the hall to your right, please.”

  Tane considered stalling, taking the time to search for wherever the Stookes kept their central warding artifacts, but really he’d only told Vathaa he’d try so that she’d let him in. The truth was, Endo was smart enough to have that room thoroughly secured. Instead, he turned right, just as he’d been told. A door waited for him at the end of a short hall, slightly ajar.

  Taking a long, shaky breath, Tane brushed his fingers over the watch case in his pocket, and then reached back to grasp Indree’s pistol. Keeping his hand hidden behind him, he pushed the door open and stepped into a workshop lined with long tables and littered with artifice debris: brass and copper and gold and silver and gems of all kinds.

  Endo was waiting inside, his chair facing the door. The earnest little gnome Tane was familiar with had disappeared—his face was hard, and his eyes were cold. On the floor beside him, Umbla Stooke lay prone and bound, cyclopean brass spider-crawlers clasping her wrists and ankles with their segmented legs. One perched on her chest, holding a sharp-pronged claw at her throat. By the terror in her eyes, it was more the claw keeping her silent than the gag in her mouth.

  “Let her go, Endo,” Tane said. At the sight of him Umbla Stooke’s eyes widened, and a muffled shout started under her gag.

  “Quiet, Mother,” Endo said, and his crawler pressed its claw slightly harder against her neck. She fell silent.

  “You can’t win here, Endo,” said Tane, moving closer. “This will go easier on you if you cooperate.”

  Endo smiled without any real mirth. “Now Tane, you can’t really have thought I would believe that. After what I’ve done, there is no ‘easy’ sentence. No, I think I’ll wait this out.”

  “That’s about what I thought you’d say.” In a fluid motion, Tane drew Indree’s pistol and aimed it at Endo’s chest. “So let’s define ‘easy’ as ‘still alive’. Make a move I don’t like, or utter a word of the lingua, and I can take that option away.” Which was assuming Endo hadn’t already cast a shield, or any other active magic that would turn and ancryst ball aside. He’s an artificer more than a combat mage. If he was already focusing on a spell, he’d show it. And he can’t cast faster than a pistol shot.

  “I don’t think you will,” said Endo. “If you’ll permit me to show you something without pulling the trigger?” He raised a hand from his lap, very slowly. In it, he held a small brass artifact. His thumb rested on a copper plate etched with glowing glyphs. “The instant this little device ceases to sense my Astral signature, my crawler will cut mother’s throat. And if you think your aim sound enough to hit the crawler, consider that you’ll have wasted your only shot—what will be left to stop me casting a spell?”

  Tane kept the pistol steady. “First your brother and now your mother. Why? What is it you want? You can’t think you’ll still get it.” Something felt wrong, and that sending pressure was still in his ears—it was hard not to try to shake his head clear, though he knew it wouldn’t help. Endo was still keeping the Astral channel open, which meant he could send a burst of pain or a sudden image at any moment. But for some reason, he hadn’t yet.

  Endo laughed bitterly. “My dear brother. Do you have any idea what it was like to see her”—he jabbed a finger at his mother, there—“treat him as the favorite, the heir apparent? To pretend to be the meek little brother when I could do things he couldn’t dream of? To watch them—and everyone else—look down with pity at the poor half-gnome with no legs, when magic gave me back far more than I ever lost? And then to learn that Ulnod was working with the Silver Dawn for non-magical rights, when it was a magicless fool who took my legs from me!”

  Tane edged slowly to one side, hoping Endo was agitated enough not to notice. He had to get closer to Umbla Stooke if he was going to do something about that crawler. I need to keep him talking, keep him distracted. “It was a mage who made the error on those spells, Endo. The accident wasn’t my father’s fault. If he’d been allowed to have the magical education—”

  “But he didn’t!” Endo shouted. “It should have been a mage checking those spells! A mage might have caught the mistake! If we weren’t so concerned with making the non-magical feel useful, your father would have had nothing to do with such a delicate artifact! And now his son has the gall to pretend at magecraft, making people like him believe they might do the same!” He took a breath, gathered his composure. “You would try to teach the blind to see, but they will never have true vision. The magicless look at me, and all they see is that I cannot walk upon the ground like they do. They never stop to think that if I needed to, I could fly.”

  “So this is all still about the accident, when you get down to it,” said Tane. He almost felt like he could understand. The same experience had shaped them both, even if Endo had gone too far. “I spent a long time obsessing over it too. I ruined almost everything good in my life dwelling on the past. I still regret it.” That was hard to face even now. So much time lost with Indree. And Allaea—he’d never even had the chance to apologize to her. “You have such a brilliant mind, and you’re wasting it trying to change something that’s already happened.”

  “I couldn’t expect you to understand,” Endo said. “You have… surprised me, I will admit, but
still, you have no magic of your own. There is a natural order to things, and we have tried to subvert it in the Protectorate for too long. It is time things were put right.”

  Tane edged further toward the senator as Endo spoke, and it was only then that he noticed something strange.

  Endo’s shadow was wrong. It had looked right from the front, but from this angle it appeared to be cast by a light that wasn’t there.

  And that sending pressure was still strong in his ears.

  “Spellfire,” Tane cursed, and swung his pistol toward the crawler at Umbla Stooke’s throat. He was close enough now that it was an easy shot. A silver flash, and the little brass automaton backflipped through the air and landed on the ground under one of Endo’s worktables, several legs broken beneath it.

  “Ah,” said Endo. “I suppose the game is up.” He laughed. “Did you really think I would sit here waiting for you just to explain my motivations in elaborate detail? I had my Knights put a contingency plan into motion as soon as I sent the Mask for you and Inspector Lovial. I’m afraid you’ve wasted quite a bit of time, Tane. And you don’t have much of that left.” His image shimmered into silver and then dissolved completely, leaving behind an empty chair.

  He’d never been there at all. He’d been sending an illusion from the moment Tane had entered.

  But the chair wasn’t actually entirely empty. A four-sided pyramid of brass about the size of Tane’s head sat upon the seat, with a round clock face set into the side. The hands glowed silver-blue, Astral images cast on clouded glass, and they were counting down. Only some two minutes remained. Beside that sat a small copper lined mimic vial. That’s why the diviners sensed him inside. He’s been buying time to get away, and I fell for it.

  Though the image had gone, Endo’s voice was still there. “I’d hoped to announce my claim to the throne more elegantly, but it seems your friends have disabled my Mask. Senseless destruction will have to do. Goodbye, Tane.” At last, the sending pressure abated.

  There was no time to be relieved that Indree and Kadka had dealt with the Mask. Whatever that pyramid-shaped artifact was, it wasn’t good, and there wasn’t long left on the clock. Tane rushed to Umbla Stooke’s side, battered the crawlers from her wrists and ankles with the butt of Indree’s pistol.