by Martha Wells
"I heard Radu the fortune-teller is dead."
Khat glanced over at the dealer thoughtfully. The statement had been as noncommittal as possible. Caster would have known about the death and the house's contents as soon as the local street thieves had built up the courage to enter the deserted building. The dealer probably thought Khat had killed Radu.
Without looking up, Caster added, "Not that he had long for the world, anyway. Rumor said the Trade Inspectors were after him."
"Trade Inspectors are after everybody," Khat said, to have something to say, then wondered at it. From Radu's money chest, it had looked as though he only sold relics for tokens. The minted coins there had been small amounts, probably fees for fortune-telling. "Do you know why they were after him?"
"A woman Radu knew said he had a High Justice interested in him." Caster shrugged one shoulder. "Told him a bad fortune, maybe."
Khat frowned down at the ants crawling out of a crack in the floor. Elen had told him how Riathen had taken the crystal plaque from a High Justice. How very odd that a High Justice should be interested in Radu the fortune-teller, when there weren't that many Justices in Charisat. And he could be just imagining connections and conspiracies where there weren't any. He said, "Did she say anything else about it?"
Caster shook his head.
They finished working out the details of the arrangement, and Caster said, "The best time to do it is tonight. I'll come to your court sometime tomorrow night after I make the deals." He got to his feet, and looked down at Khat. "Watch yourself."
As Caster went toward one of the rickety walkways, Khat thought, Silent Market dealers are telling me to be careful. Well, he knew this wasn't the wisest thing he had ever done. But it was, just possibly, the most satisfying.
* * *
Khat had chosen the spot carefully.
People were not allowed to build up against the Academia's wall any more than they were allowed to build up against the tier walls, but in the Academia's case the obligatory twenty paces of empty pavement between the wall and the nearest dwelling was not strictly enforced. Khat had long ago found places where crowding on the Fourth Tier had caused mud-brick houses to grow sometimes as close as six or seven paces to the wall. Vigils would be on the lookout for thieves trying to jump from the roofs to the wall top or to lower a rope, but they couldn't be everywhere at once, and the houses safely screened anyone scaling the wall itself.
He found Sagai and Elen already waiting where he had told them to, in a narrow alley between the rock wall and the mud-brick bulk of a row of illegal houses. "Where were you?" Sagai asked in an almost voiceless whisper. Now was not the time to be overheard by anyone, and people might be sleeping just on the other side of the crumbling walls.
"Had to take care of something," Khat whispered back. The moon was barely a sliver in the sky, and he could hardly see the others except as crouching forms. He took the rope from under his robe, making a looser coil of it so he could sling it over one shoulder. It was thin and strong, made of braided hair, and so dark it would be invisible against the wall. Sand grated under his boots. Obviously the street sweepers didn't bother with this stretch of alley, and the inhabitants would hardly complain for fear someone official might notice and make them move their homes.
"Remember, you're staying here as lookout," Khat whispered to Sagai. They had had that discussion earlier. His partner nodded, and Khat started up the wall.
Reaching the top, he struggled up onto the narrow ledge. There were a few pieces of cut glass still stuck into it, but most had broken away. The buildings of the Academia stretched away on the other side, a maze of stone and tile, quiet and all but pitch dark. There were a few lighted windows, and ghostlamps glowed in the more frequented courts further away. Only the scholars, students, and servants who were without families would live inside, and only the most dedicated would be up this late working in lamplight. Directly below was a long narrow court, little more than an outdoor connecting passage between a few silent structures.
Khat paused to uncoil half the rope, drop it down for Elen, and work it into a gap between the stones, where it couldn't pull loose and sever itself on the glass. Then he dropped down to the court below.
He waited, crouched on the pavement, but the only response was the skittering of a few startled lizards.
He felt the rope jerk behind him as Elen scrambled over the top and started down. In another moment she was beside him. He stood up to pull the rope down, and suddenly Sagai was coming over the top. Cursing under his breath, Khat stepped back to give him room.
"You were supposed to be the lookout," he hissed as Sagai dropped down beside him.
"We don't need a lookout," Sagai whispered calmly, jerking the rope to free it and drawing it back down the wall. "It would be suspicious if someone saw me."
Khat had the idea he was being paid back for not telling anyone about his little problem with Lushan sooner; Sagai had certainly picked a moment when it was difficult if not impossible for him to retaliate. Disgruntled, he took the rope away from Sagai, coiled it again, and put it away under his robe.
They made their way silently, Khat relying on Elen's night sight to help guide them. He knew what direction to go to reach Arad's place, but he didn't know which of the narrow little courts led into other courts and which ones dead-ended. They heard voices at times, and the footsteps of restless scholars or servants, and once they had to huddle in a doorway as two vigils passed not twenty paces away, talking idly and swinging their ghostlamps.
Finally they reached the court where Arad's house lay. It looked deserted and silent from the outside, but a glow from somewhere along the gently pitched roof meant that lamps were still lit in the large chamber with the louvers. Watching it from the shelter of a gap between two other buildings, Khat didn't know whether he was relieved or worried by the lack of lights and vigils. "Shouldn't it be guarded?" Elen whispered. "That valuable mural..."
"Yes, it should be," Sagai answered her. "But careful guarding of otherwise innocuous places often attracts thieves, and the Academia cannot afford all the vigils it needs. And Scholar Arad may have discouraged the posting of guards, if he has something to hide."
"If he doesn't, this is a wasted trip," Khat muttered. He led them across the square at a walk, knowing that if they were seen at a distance there was nothing to show they didn't belong here. Once up the steps and under the porch of the building Khat felt less exposed, but he was experienced enough to know any feeling of security in this situation was deceptive.
There were no vigils lying in wait in the foyer, and from here Khat could see the glow of lamplight from the rooms deeper within. He motioned for Sagai and Elen to stay back, and went quietly down the little hallway. He could sense someone breathing in one of the rooms ahead.
Khat reached a point where he could see through the arch that led into the central chamber, and his first thought was that he had somehow picked the wrong house.
Awash in lamplight the room looked larger than it had before, and there was an extra door, this one leading not into another hallway but into a small chamber that seemed packed with wooden racks and shelves. But there was the tile mural, a pool of glowing color under the flickering light, and there was Arad, sitting on the floor with a book folded out before him, examining some small object that glittered with the characteristic luster mythenin took on in firelight.
Khat stepped out into the room, and Arad looked up, startled and guilty. He was wearing a pair of reading lenses, held on by cords looped over his ears, and they made his eyes look larger. When he saw who was standing over him, the guilt changed to fear.
Khat said, "Never deal with the Fourth Tier, do you?"
Then Elen came barreling in behind him. She snatched the small object out of Arad's hand and shook it under his nose. "You had it all along! Do you know how much danger you put yourself in, and us, with your lies?"
Arad was scooting backward. "What do you want here? Are you thieves after all?"
Sagai said, "Stop waving it about, Elen." He took the little relic away from her and added, "And don't shout at the man. It's not doing any good."
He held the relic where Khat and he could both see it. It was a tiny oval of mythenin, faceted along the edges, with the figure of a faceless man with wings spread out behind his body delicately engraved in the center. It was smaller than Khat had expected from the description in the book, about the size of an overlarge coin. It didn't even cover the center of Sagai's palm. Khat said, "It's smaller than the book said it was."
"Yes," Arad said, perhaps seizing on the one thing he had heard that made sense to him. "The figures in the book were wrong." Then the scholar blinked. "But how did you know that?"
Khat and Sagai exchanged a look. Mystified, Elen said slowly, "Because we've seen the book. How did you know what it said?"
Arad gestured. "But I have it here. When did you see it?"
They looked down. The text that lay unfolded on the floor had brown, weathered paper, faded ink. Khat saw a page with a colored engraving on it, and swore under his breath. He sat on his heels to look more closely, gently unfolded a few pages. Arad watched, worried, but didn't object. "This is the book, Elen," Khat said.
"You mean that's it, the Survivor text?" Sagai knelt to examine the book eagerly.
"It's a copy," Khat corrected. "Maybe made at the same time as Riathen's, maybe a little earlier." One side of the cover was sun-faded, and some of the pages were torn.
Sagai unfolded the section with the colored engravings, studying them in wonder.
Elen was staring at Arad, as if something was finally starting to make sense to her. "The old man had two copies," she said. "Of course. That's why he gave one to Riathen so casually."
"He gave him the one that was easier to read," Khat said, sitting back to let Sagai examine the text. If the old Patrician had wanted the Master Warder's opinion on the contents, that only made sense. "This one isn't nearly as well preserved, and the ink is faded on some of these pages."
"Two copies?" Arad was even more confused. "I got this from Radu, the Fourth Tier fortune-teller. I thought you must know all about that."
Elen sat down on the floor and rested her head in her hands. She said, "A copy of this book, and that relic with the winged image, were originally owned by a Patrician on the Second Tier. He gave the book to Sonet Riathen, the Master Warder, and then the old Patrician was murdered, his home broken into and all the relics stolen. Riathen found one of the relics, a sort of mythenin plate with crystal pieces, in the hands of a High Justice ..."
So far Arad had shown no inclination to shout for help. He turned eagerly to the page of the book with the colored engraving that Riathen had put such emphasis on. "This mythenin plate?"
"Yes," Elen nodded. "That one."
It didn't appear the relics had gone far afield at all. "Funny that Radu should have two relics from the same theft," Khat said, looking over at Elen.
"Funny indeed," Sagai agreed. "Perhaps Radu arranged the theft himself."
Khat shrugged. It was a possibility, but Radu hadn't brokered or dealt relics in a large enough fashion to be much noticed by the Silent Market. Khat didn't find it too likely that he would have arranged the theft himself. "Or he just bought them, knowing they were stolen."
"I can't say I would be surprised to hear that Radu was in league with any number of thieves," Arad said. "I tried to find out his source for such unusual relics, and all I could get out of him was mystic nonsense. By the way..." He peered at them curiously. "Who are you?"
There seemed little point in keeping it a secret. "That's Sagai and I'm Khat. We're relic dealers from the Sixth Tier, and Elen really is a Warder."
"It was too much to hope that she wasn't." Arad sighed. "I hoped to solve this mystery on my own, but you seem to know everything else." He shook his head in defeat. "Let me show you."
He climbed awkwardly to his feet, taking one of the lamps and going toward the opening of the little room that had somehow been tacked on to the larger chamber since this afternoon. Khat followed him, and saw that it was little more than a large cupboard. It seemed to be normally sealed off by a stone slab several inches thick that was lowered and pushed forward to sit flush with the outer wall by a system of counterweights high in the ceiling of the concealed space. The slab even had false seams carved into it to match the blocks the rest of the room was constructed with. "Did you make this yourself?" Khat asked Arad.
"It has been here many years. I discovered it by accident," the scholar explained.
The hidden relics were neatly stored, glass objects to one side, metal and mythenin to the other, with tile and other ceramic fragments in the center. Most were sitting on top of folded squares of paper, which would contain notes on how the individual relic had been found and any interesting features about it that Arad had observed. This was a method Robelin had used as well.
Arad pointed to the dusty area beneath the racks and said, "That is something else you've been looking for, isn't it?"
On the floor was a solid block of some shiny black stone. The book had been wrong about it, too. It was two feet in height but closer to three feet long and three feet wide, not four as the caption had said. It also clearly wasn't made of mythenin.
"I bought it from Radu last year, at the same time I bought the book," Arad said. "His price was ridiculously low. He seemed anxious to be rid of it."
Khat sat on his heels to run a hand over the block's surface. "That's why no one ever heard of it before. It went from the thieves to Radu and then to you. It was never on the Silent Market." The feel of the stone was cold, with the silky texture of the inner walls of the Remnant. He couldn't make sense of the lines etched into it; like the carvings on the Miracle, they seemed to be nothing more than abstract designs, spirals and whirls, mingling, crossing, melting into each other. Trying to follow the pattern with your eyes was oddly hypnotic. Khat shook off the effect and looked up at Arad-edelk. "What is it?"
The scholar shook his head and adjusted his lenses. "I don't know. That is one of the mysteries I hoped to solve. I wanted to complete a full translation of this text, which I hope will explain the importance of the relics which are so prominently featured in the engravings. I meant to present the whole to the Academia when I was finished . . . The resemblance this block has to the Miracle can't be coincidence, but there is no magical effect. That I've observed, at least."
"The Miracle didn't do anything for years either. They kept it in the Elector's garden until it started to make light," Khat said, then wondered if anybody was going to ask him how he knew that. Sagai gave him an odd look as he knelt to examine the strange stone block, but the others seemed to take his knowledge for granted.
Arad was watching them warily. Now he asked, "Will you take it away tonight?"
Elen started to answer and stopped, then made another attempt, and those words didn't make it out either. She wasn't high-handed by nature, and taking prized relics away from this little scholar who was standing before her so helplessly wasn't something she had bargained on.
Getting to his feet, Sagai said, "No one will take anything tonight. Perhaps we should talk this over."
* * *
While Arad warmed tea over a brazier on the other side of the room, Khat watched Elen, who was biting her lip and turning over the little plaque with the winged figure as if she suspected it of concealing something. "What's the matter with you?" he asked her. "We found them, just like you said we would."
"There's something I don't like about this. The theft, Radu's death, Constans's involvement," she said. "Did Radu arrange the original theft or was it only a coincidence?"
Sagai had been examining the Survivor text, and now he glanced up and said, "It's possible. It's also possible the thieves betrayed the one who ordered the theft, and dispersed the relics for more coin."
Elen didn't look up at him, still studying the winged relic intently, and her voice was grave. "But who wanted the relics
stolen in the first place? Constans?"
It must be Constans, Khat thought. Except that Constans had the skills to perform the theft himself, and had no need to trust to lower-tier hirelings. And somehow he had gotten the impression that Constans had become interested in the relics only after Sonet Riathen had started his search.
Arad came back to them and took a seat on one of the low stools. He had closed the secret cubbyhole again, and even now that Khat knew its location it was difficult to trace its outline in the wall. Considering the care Arad took with it, he wondered if the other scholars knew of its existence at all. Arad asked Khat, "Didn't you work with Scholar Robelin at one time?"
"For a while."
"I thought your name was familiar. Ecazar still speaks of you."
Before Khat could ask what that worthy had to say about him after all this time, Elen leaned forward and said, "Scholar Arad, can you tell us what you know of the book and the relics?"
Watching her closely, Arad asked, "Your Master Warder will take them, won't he?"
She nodded seriously. "Yes, but he will pay you for them."
Arad gestured toward the mural. "I'll be paid for my work on that, but I'll never see it again."
Elen seemed to debate with herself, then said, "Please, I know you have no reason to want to help us, but can you tell me what you've learned from the book so far? I think it's important."
"Very well." Arad took off his lenses and rubbed his eyes wearily. "It talks of magic, of an invasion-"
"Invasion?" Khat interrupted, ignoring Elen's frustrated glare. "From across the Last Sea?"
Sagai handed Arad back the text, but the scholar held it on his lap without opening it. "No, not from there. It says 'They came down through the Western Doors of the sky, from the land of the dead.'"
"But the land of the dead is said to be under the earth," Sagai said, puzzled.
Arad tapped the cover of the folded book. "Not according to this scribe."