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Web of Lies (The Hundred Halls Book 2)

Page 16

by Thomas K. Carpenter


  Chapter Twenty-One

  A haunting saxophone played over the speakers in the kitchen of the Glass Cabaret. Pi was placing enchantments on the dishes and silverware to keep them clean, even after use. The tricky part was making it so the utensils would work during the meal, but not let the food slide off the tines. Radoslav hadn't told her how to perform the spell, so she'd had to deconstruct it from the spell residue.

  The work was tedious, but she didn't mind. It helped soothe her simmering rage. After Rigel's play a few weeks ago, Pi noticed that Aurie was pushing the team harder in the contest. The last attempt had been disastrous. No one stuck to the plan, trying to compensate for Aurie's intensity. The bugs had overrun them at wave three two weeks ago, and wave one last week. No one had even scheduled the next attempt, despite the spring semester winding down towards finals.

  In the meantime, she was taking on more and more duties for Radoslav since the encounter with Slyvan earlier in the school year. She wondered if the Ruby Court had diminished his powers through their control of the power conduit.

  Pi was hunched over the stainless steel table, sprinkling dried clouds on the row of spoons as a faez binder. The seed of a headache was germinating at her temples from the focused work, so she didn't hear the door whisk open until it was too late.

  Radoslav's anger had twisted his lips into bent razors. A column of hard smoke shot from his outthrust hand, launching Pi into the subzero refrigerator. The impact sent stars through her vision. She had no time to defend herself before chains of vapor grabbed her arms and held them to the cold surface.

  "You double-crossing piece of shit," he said.

  A curl of smoke slipped from his lips like a snake and wrapped around her neck. It gave her throat a muscular squeeze, restricting her air.

  If Pi had ever wondered how he could be called the Black Butcher, she wondered no longer. His eyes were jet black, his pale skin smoldered like ash.

  "I'm trying to help," she choked out.

  "Help?" he said with absolute condemnation. "You know nothing about what you're doing. You think for a moment that because you've survived a few minor skirmishes that you can suddenly maneuver your way through the courts of the maetrie and come away unscathed? You're putting countless lives at risk with your idiocy."

  Pi fought against the smoke around her throat. "At least I'm trying to do something, instead of hiding out in this bar."

  When he squeezed his hand, she thought he was going to kill her. The smoke crumpled the refrigerator as if it were an aluminum can. Pi recalibrated her understanding of his remaining power. Even with Slyvan tampering with his power, Radoslav was as scary as a Hall patron. Maybe scarier.

  "I am not hiding here," said Radoslav. "What I am doing is keeping my people from destroying themselves."

  "They might do that with or without you," she said. "Wouldn't you rather help?"

  He paced back and forth in front of her like an angry panther desperate to get out of his cage. Pi sensed that at any moment he could finish what he'd come to do, which was kill her. She had no doubt of that. He was convinced that she needed to be stopped.

  After a few tense minutes, he paused in front of her and held his finger to her chest. The smoke bindings rippled and squeezed, reflecting his mercurial mood like tentacles.

  "No more meddling. No matter how you think you might be helping. If I find out that you stepped even one foot into the Eternal City, I will kill you." His eyes narrowed. "I might be a fool for not killing you right now, but I'm trying to learn from my mistakes. Don't make me regret it."

  Radoslav didn't wait for her to reply and charged out of the room. The smoke released her, and she collapsed on the floor. The kitchen was a shattered mess, broken dishes everywhere. Pi took a deep breath, recaptured her hair into a ponytail, and went back to work.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  The lattice of broken slats fell to the floor with a resounding thump, an all-too-familiar result for Aurie. She turned around to face her sister, who had a bemused expression on her lips.

  "That was terrible, sis," she said.

  Aurie put her hands on her hips. "I thought I brought you here to help."

  "If you want lies, I'll send for Rigel, and he can make some illusions for you," said Pi.

  "Don't bother, I can see right through them," said Aurie.

  "You can?" Pi scrunched her face up. "When he makes those illusionary spiders, I can practically feel the hair on their legs."

  "Nope," said Aurie. "Might as well be poorly made plastic spiders for me."

  "Weird," said Pi. "I wonder if that has to do with mendancy? Since illusions are a bit like lying. Maybe that's something that could help you here."

  Aurie's jaw ached, which was weird because she hadn't been punched or anything. Probably been clenching it too much. As she massaged her jaw, she said, "I'm not sure how. Being able to see through illusions isn't going help anywhere, especially in here. I'm not going to pass this class with Semyon if I can't pull off a feat of mass mendancy."

  "You need to try harder," offered Pi.

  "I am!"

  She got so mad she almost fell off the post.

  "Do it a few more times while I watch," said Pi. "I need more than one viewing to see if I can help."

  Aurie did as asked, but wasn't able to make the slats hold enough to take even one step. After a dozen attempts, Pi called it off.

  "Have you ever gotten them to hold?" asked Pi.

  "A few times," said Aurie. "But not many. There's just too many things to fix. I can't do it all at once."

  "But you made the clothes on Violet and her twit friends fall off with a single word," said Pi.

  "Yeah," said Aurie, shaking her head. "I don't honestly know how I did that. Maybe it was a mistake. What if it was really Echo that caused it?"

  Pi frowned. "I doubt it. Otherwise, we'd be doing better in the contest."

  "What then? I'm out of ideas," said Aurie, frustrated.

  "Anything special about that day? Anything you remember?" asked Pi.

  "Other than Violet being a total jerk? No," said Aurie.

  She'd been over this a thousand times in her head. Aurie had no earthly idea why that day she'd been able to perform a nearly impossible feat of mendancy, yet she couldn't do anything significant since.

  "I'm getting down," said Aurie. "There's no use trying this if I don't have any new ideas."

  To her surprise, Pi said, "Yeah, you should get down."

  Her sister had a strange look on her face, one she didn't trust.

  "Why did you agree with me? That makes me nervous," said Aurie.

  Once Aurie was on the floor, Pi started climbing up the pole.

  "What are you doing?" asked Aurie.

  When Pi reached the top, she stared down at Aurie and stuck out her tongue.

  "Pi, get down. You'll break your neck if you fall. You don't have the levitation bracelets," she said.

  "I'm not getting down," said Pi, and she hit the button, making the slats lift into place. They would fall again at the first whisper of magic.

  Seeing her sister on the pole, thirty feet in the air, made Aurie jumpy inside.

  "Pi. Seriously, you're scaring me," said Aurie.

  Her sister made small steps as she turned around in a circle. "How do you stand up here for hours at a time? This is insane."

  "What's going on? Why won't you get down?" asked Aurie, biting her lower lip. She'd climb up and get her down, but would probably only make Pi fall. It was like when they were eight and six respectively and Aurie had knocked Pi off the bed and broke her arm. This time it was quite a bit higher.

  "What if it's an illusion? Maybe I need to have faith to walk across this area," said Pi, holding one foot out as if she were going to step onto the fragile slats.

  "Stop! Get down, Pi. This isn't funny, and it's not an illusion. If you step forward, the slats will fall and so will you. You're going to break your neck," she said.

  Pi held her arms out an
d looked straight down at her sister with a look of pure determination. "Then you'd better figure it out. I'm going to step forward on the count of three. One."

  Aurie started to run forward, but realized she'd never have enough time to climb the pole.

  "Two."

  She stopped, bunched her hands into fists.

  "Three."

  At the final number, Pi lifted her leg and took a large step forward onto the slats.

  A thousand things went through Aurie's mind in that instant. She imagined her sister lying on the floor like a discarded marionette, eyes blank and unfocused. Or her parents quietly scolding her for not taking care of her sister. The first time that Pi walked, when she was a chubby cheeked toddler. Halloween, dressed as two Jedi. Making sparklers turn different colors with faez, even though they knew it was dangerous. That fierce I-don't-care-what-you-think twinkle in her eye, smile like a thousand hugs that you never wanted to let go of, the sweet smell of her hair when they cuddled on the hammock watching fireflies, the thump-thump of her heart, blinding love that hurt so much when she thought too long about it, carefree, mischievous, best sister in the world.

  The toe of her sister's sneaker touched the wooden slats. Aurie had no time to think, no time for anything. The faez came like a flood.

  "Bridge!" she screamed, the faez bubbling up and through her like a geyser. The wealth of magic gave her vertigo, as if one person was not meant to hold so much.

  Pi's weight fell upon slats, and held. Aurie wanted to cheer, but the danger wasn't over yet. She concentrated on the lie, that the connecting slats were really a bridge, a solid foundation built on deep rock. That Pi could drive a tank over it and it'd still hold.

  At each step, the slats groaned and creaked. Pi walked forward calmly, eyes straight ahead.

  Through sheer force of will, the bridge held. Aurie would not let it falter while her sister was upon it.

  And then it was over, and Pi was on the other side.

  The lattice of wooden poles collapsed with a clatter, followed by Aurie dipping to one knee.

  She didn't even need to look up at Pi to know there was a smug smile on her face.

  "I hate you," said Aurie.

  "It worked," said Pi.

  "Why didn't you tell me you were going to do that?" asked Aurie.

  With unsteady legs, she stood.

  "Then it wouldn't have worked," said Pi.

  "Why did it work?" asked Aurie.

  "Really? Sometimes, Aurie, I swear. It worked because you're too damn selfless. You'll do amazing, and stupid, things for other people, but you forget about yourself. The mendancy worked that day because you were protecting Echo," said Pi.

  "But I wasn't protecting him. They'd already ruined his backpack. It was petty, and he wasn't in danger," said Aurie.

  Pi shrugged and started climbing down. "It's not like you knew what you were going to do."

  Aurie rubbed her temple. "I still don't see how this is going to help me."

  "This is everything," said Pi. "It means you can do it."

  Aurie wanted to feel better about the situation, but she wasn't as excited as her sister about the successful mendancy.

  "Yeah, I did it once, when you were in danger," said Aurie. "But how am I going to prove it to Semyon?"

  "One step at a time, sis. One step at a time," said Pi, clearly proud of herself.

  Aurie wished she was as confident as her sister.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  The Reaping Ceremony had come marching towards Pi with the subtlety of a steam train. Despite the threats from Radoslav, she'd known she was going to attend the ceremony on Lady Amethyte's behalf from the moment he'd left her.

  Standing on 4th and Magenta, Pi waited for her ride to the Eternal City to arrive. The stylized runes on the invitation had suggested a formal affair, so Pi had borrowed a dress from Ashley. It was a bright red swanky number with a slit for her leg to stick out as if she were some Hollywood starlet. She didn't quite manage to fill out the top of the dress since she was rather flat chested, but a few spells had cinched it tight enough that the shoulders didn't slip free.

  The enchantment on the dress wasn't the only one she'd cast, but it was the most mundane. Despite Slyvan's assurances that this would be a boring event, and the gift mostly a formality to spark new negotiations, Pi treated it like she was being sent into a warzone. The hardest part about the spell work had been making them unobtrusive. She knew that if she went in bristling with invasive enchantments, she could do more harm than good, so her work had to be subtle. Pi hoped she'd been careful enough.

  At least she hadn't had to worry about the weather, as the spring had brought temperance to the coast. Not that a few spells wouldn't have fixed that.

  She held a clutch purse and the case containing the necklace to her stomach as cars flashed past. A bunch of young men in camo hats catcalled her from their oversized truck with a Confederate flag on the bumper, so Pi flipped them off and put a spell on the tires to have a slow leak they would never be able to find nor fix. One perk to being a mage was never having to take shit from guys like them.

  She was beginning to wonder if she was waiting in the wrong spot when she heard squealing tires and honking horns. A half a block down, a grainy portal shimmered into existence like a mirage in the desert, and a horse-drawn carriage came bursting through, forcing normal traffic to veer away.

  The horses were anything but ordinary. They were made of polished steel, glowing contour lines accented their muscles, and their eyes were bright and ominous. The carriage was black metal and polished silver, looking like something out of a theatrical heavy metal concert: the vehicle in which the lead singer would arrive to flame jets and ball-busting bass notes.

  Pi expected smoke to billow out of the door when the carriage stopped next to her. The horses' steel hooves cracked the concrete at each blow as they stomped in place.

  She was aware that every eye on the street was watching her, and she silently cursed this unsubtle arrival of her transportation. There was no way that Radoslav wouldn't find out about it, which had probably been Slyvan's intention, a payback for the bone bracelet trick. But it was too late now—she'd made promises that she had to deliver on.

  Pi stepped into the carriage and seated herself on the red velvet bench. Almost as soon as she leaned back, the door slammed shut and the steel horses burst into motion, making a hard turn back toward the portal, throwing her into the side, forcing cars to go screaming out of the way. There was a crash, metal impacting. People were yelling, and cameras everywhere captured the moment.

  While she'd planned for the possibility of being spotted while in public and placed the proper obscuring enchantments on her person, the meaning of the grotesque display wouldn't be lost on her benefactor. No one else in the city would know who had gotten in the carriage except one person: Radoslav.

  But she pushed it out of her mind as the carriage entered the portal into the Eternal City. The difference from the city of sorcery was remarkable. Invictus was bright, noisy, people-filled, a bit garish in its American mercantilism. The Eternal City brooded like an old crone chain smoking, eyes clear with the threat that she would cut you open for getting even a speck of mud on her filthy carpet.

  Streets and buildings flew by at a rapid pace. The carriage barreled through the city as if it were being hunted. Unlike her first visit, Pi saw people this time, though everyone looked like they were prepared for a fight, spells dripping off them like deadly ink.

  The carriage headed deeper into the city where the skyscrapers walked. Her destination became apparent when she saw the massive structure at the center of the pack, though to her surprise, it wasn't moving. They looked like metal and concrete giants with their heads in the clouds. A faint green glow emanated from the windows of the middle building, a subtle nod to the Jade Queen.

  "Oh, Pythia, what are we getting ourselves into?" she said, the window cold against her splayed fingers.

  Before she had a ch
ance to wonder how she would reach the upper levels of the superstructure, the carriage leapt into the air, sending her stomach into her throat. Pi stuck her head out the window to see the metal hooves creating sparks each time they struck the empty air. As she rose further, the city unfolded, stretching to a greater horizon, and though the gray clouds that hung beneath a tortured sky obscured the tops of the tallest buildings, she saw the city that went on forever.

  The ride ended when the carriage trotted to a stop on a landing platform near the bottom of the sky. Other guests exited vehicles more outlandish than hers: a ball of pulsating goo that ejected its travelers with a sickening plop, a host of radioactive butterflies that carried their hosts then exploded into crackling fireworks once they had landed, and others too strange to comprehend.

  In comparison, her heavy metal carriage seemed mundane, and she wondered if she'd mistaken Slyvan's intent. Maybe the carriage had been the least of what he could have sent.

  At least the fashions weren't reflective of the vehicles. Pi had worried about her choice, but the going haute couture could have been a product of the Paris runways.

  The door guardian was a mountain of a man with gray skin and black eyes like the rest of the maetrie, but pulsing greenish lines ran across the sides of his head and down his neck. They looked like radioactive electronics. Pi wasn't sure if they were functional or for show, and she hoped she wouldn't have to find out.

  Pi handed him the invitation.

  "You're quite the bouncer," she told him. "I know a guy who would love some tips from you like how do you get blood out of your shirt, or what do you do when someone summons a vomit demon."

  The door guardian took the paper without comment. It looked miniscule in his granite hands. He pushed the door open, letting her pass.

  "I guess all maetrie are as moody as Radoslav," she muttered to herself.

  The inside was a grand ballroom. Lots of polished chrome with those glowing green lines that she'd seen on the guardian. It felt like she'd been miniaturized and placed on a circuit board.

 

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