All the Paths of Shadow (43 page)

Angis caught her by her shoulder, keeping her from toppling over.

“I think you got rid of the buggers, Mage,” he said. “You tend to your friend. I’ll watch your back.”

Tears welled up in Meralda’s eyes and she saw Mug’s motionless leaves caught in the bent bars of the bird cage.

One of his eyes stuck through the bars. It was crushed, and leaking sap.

“Oh Mug,” she said. “No, no, no.”

Kervis bent down, his dagger in his hand.

“I can pry the cage apart, ma’am,” he said. “Then we can get him out of there. Will you let me do that?”

Meralda managed to nod. She laid her hand on Mug’s crushed leaves, but he did not stir.

“Mug.”

Kervis gently pushed her hand aside, put the tip of his knife through the crushed cage’s frame, and then slowly pried up.

“Hold the other side,” he said, to Tervis.

The cage slowly expanded. After moving the knife, Kervis was able to pull it out far enough to remove the cage’s bottom, and free the motionless dandyleaf plant.

“Water!” bellowed Angis, at the circle of confused faces Meralda could just barely see through her tears. “A pitcher of water, man! Crown’s business!”

In a moment, a pitcher of water was thrust in Meralda’s hand.

She poured it onto the clump of dirt that had survived the blow. Mug’s roots trailed from it, limp and still.

Angis gripped her shoulder.

“A wee bit more, lass.”

Crying, Meralda emptied the pitcher.

Mug’s stalk twitched. His roots underwent a spasm, and then clutched hard at the clump of soil.

A single green eye opened, swiveled up to hang close to Meralda’s nose, and blinked.

“Please tell me you did bad things to whatever hit me,” he said, in a tiny, weak voice.

Meralda cried, unable to speak. She stroked Mug’s wilted leaves and nodded.

“I’ll need a new pot,” said Mug. His open eye began to wobble. “And some of that fancy Eryan peat.”

Booted feet charged up, and shouts to make way sounded.

“The guard is here,” said Kervis. “Keep an eye on them, little brother.” He sheathed his sword and turned to meet them.

“I’ll be going to bed now,” muttered Mug. “Don’t mind the dishes.”

Then his eye closed, slumped, and fell.

Meralda hugged him to her chest, wet roots and all.

“We’re here,” said Kervis, gently. “May I take him? The wards…”

Meralda managed a nod, and carefully handed a wilted, drooped Mug over to Kervis.

Forty special palace guards surrounded Meralda and the Bellringers, ringing them in steel. The captain himself stood at Meralda’s back while she opened the laboratory doors and spoke the word that soothed her wards.

“You lads go first,” said the captain. Meralda didn’t argue.

Mug groaned softly as she took his cage.

The guards closest to the stairs tensed and called for someone to halt. Meralda turned, watched Donchen slowly take the last pair of steps, his arms raised, his face grim and smeared with something dark.

Oil,
thought Meralda.
He’s got oil on his face.

“Let him through,” she said. The words caught in her throat the first time, and she had to lick her lips and take a breath and try again.

“I said let him through.”

The ring of guardsmen parted, and Donchen made his way to Meralda.

Donchen was filthy. His clothes were torn and streaked with filth. He stank of the gutters, and something even worse.

“I was there,” he said. “They were waiting in the sewer beneath the street. I tried to stop them.” He dipped his head in a tiny bow. “I failed.”

“Come inside.”

Kervis and Tervis sidled past Meralda and entered the laboratory, hands on hilts.

“It’s empty,” said Kervis, after a moment.

Meralda took Donchen’s hand. He looked up at her, eyes wide in surprise, and then smiled.

His hand is warm,
thought Meralda.
What a silly thing to notice. Of course his hand is warm. It’s a hand.

“We’ll be right here,” growled the captain. “If anything wants in it can see how it likes being cut to pieces first.”

“Thank you, Captain,” said Meralda, feeling her face flush crimson at the stares of so many guards.

She pulled Donchen inside, and quickly shut the door.

Donchen mopped at his face with a clean washcloth as he perched in her rickety spare chair.

“So you think he’ll heal?”

Meralda gently pushed Mug’s new soil down. Mug remained upright, his leaves twitching now and then. All his eyes were closed, and he muttered now and then, but never quite formed words.

“He will.” Meralda frowned and cleared her throat. “Of course he will. His roots are intact. His stems are bruised but not broken. He’ll be fine.”

Goboy’s mirror streamed bright, warm sun onto Mug. Meralda gave him another half-turn so all his leaves could take in some light.

Donchen nodded. His lower lip was split. His right eye was going puffy and dark. Meralda could tell from his stiff posture and barely hidden grimaces he had bruised, if not broken, ribs beneath his soiled white shirt.

I’ve never seen a more handsome man in all my life,
she thought.

“I smell like an outhouse,” he said, grinning. “I do hope you’ll forgive me for that. It is not a practice in which I habitually engage.”

“Nonsense. Tirlish sewers smell of roses and perfume,” said Meralda. “You still haven’t told me what led you to enter one in the first place.”

“I carry a device similar to the one I gave you. It showed the presence of Hang magic along your route. I happened to be traveling ahead of you, so I took a bit of a detour and found a group of singularly unusual ropes gathering below the street.”

“And you tried to fight them all, at once?”

Donchen shrugged and grimaced at the effort. “I did first attempt to reason with them, Mage. But they were determined to do you harm. I decided to slow them down by entangling myself in all of their various lengths. Oh, how they struggled to escape my implacable grasp!”

Meralda smiled. “I see that. I imagine they were close to surrender when my carriage arrived.”

“Very nearly. Another moment and I’d have made bell pulls of them all.”

“Grapefruit,” muttered Mug. “Prancing hornbill.”

Donchen laughed, wincing.

“The truth is, Mage, they overwhelmed me from the first. My own magical defenses failed. Almost as if they were anticipated. Troubling, that.”

“I thought your butterflies revealed all the Hang conspirators. Have they not been…?”

Meralda hesitated, searching for words.

“Tried? Executed? Boiled in oil?” Donchen shrugged. “Truly, Mage, I don’t know what, if any, actions have been taken against them. The machinations of the House of Chezin are often well beyond my understanding.”

I find that troubling,
thought Meralda.

Donchen’s slate-grey eyes met Meralda’s. “I am pleased to see that your own arcane defenses proved more than adequate.”

Meralda remembered the thrill of power she felt while holding Nameless and Faceless.

“Many of the older artifacts here are quite powerful,” she said. The lie lay bitter on her lips. “The king will be livid when he gets the bill for the water mains.”

“A small price to pay, I think.”

Is that pain in his eyes?

“Thank you for coming to my rescue,” said Meralda.

“Quite the contrary. You came to mine. I was being throttled right below your feet, when you turned my assailant into a rather showy cloud of ash.” Donchen stood. “I
do
smell of an outhouse. Might I borrow yonder water closet, before Mug wakes and decides I am a compost heap?”

“I’ll have fresh clothes sent up,” said Meralda, wrinkling her nose. “I can send for some of your own, if you like.”

Donchen rose slowly from his chair, holding his ribs as he moved. “Actually, I’d prefer a guard uniform, if that’s not too much a slap in the face to Tirlish military tradition. Mail shirt, helmet, sword. Can that be done?”

Puzzled, Meralda shouted for Tervis, who came at a trot.

“Yes, ma’am?”

“I need a uniform,” said Meralda. “In Donchen’s size. With arms. Can you do that, quietly, without telling anyone why?”

Tervis grinned and straightened. “Right away! Straight sword or Argen curved?”

“Straight, please,” said Donchen. “And sharp. Very sharp.”

Chapter Seventeen

Donchen’s plain straight sword flashed as it fell. He stepped back with his right foot, pivoted, and when he stopped the tip of his sword was a finger’s breadth from Kervis’ throat.

“You simply draw your opponent’s blade to his right, and then you step, turn, stab,” said Donchen. He flicked his sword away and fell back into a defensive crouch. “Now you try.”

Kervis nodded and charged.

Tervis sat beside Meralda and mopped sweat, fresh from his own bout with the Hang. “He’s so fast,” he whispered. “Faster than Sergeant Smithy, that’s for sure.”

Meralda looked away from Donchen and Kervis and leaned back in her chair.
He looks Tirlish, in that guardsman’s garb,
she thought.
Dashing, in fact, even with a black eye and a split lip.

“I’m sure he is,” she said.

Tervis nodded at Mug. “He looks better, ma’am. Not so wilted. Has he said anything yet?”

“Nothing that made sense. But he’s dreaming. Watch.”

Mug’s leaves shivered, and his eye stalks moved as if in a sudden puff of wind.

“That’s a good sign, isn’t it, ma’am?”

“I’d be far more worried if he was perfectly still.”

Tervis nodded.

“I like him. I’m going to miss seeing him, when the Accords are done.” The Bellringer’s face reddened. “We’ll miss seeing you too, ma’am, if you don’t mind me saying so.”

“Of course I don’t mind. I didn’t want bodyguards, you know. But I’ve quite enjoyed your company. Who knows? I might ask for a permanent deployment.”

Tervis lit up with a wide sudden smile.

“We’d like that, ma’am!”

“I’ll see to it, then. If your brother agrees, of course.”

“He will. We’ve, um, talked about it. Please don’t tell him I told you that.”

“I won’t.”

“Well, I’d better get back to practice,” said Tervis. “Thank you, Mage.”

“Thank you, Guardsman.”

“I didn’t order shoes,” said Mug. “Oblate spheroid.”

Meralda patted the dandyleaf’s tossing leaves until they were still.

“As I was saying,” said the Tower, in a near whisper. “The only point of contact between the tethers and the curseworks appears to be this juncture, here…”

A diagram appeared in the corner of the sunlit glass. Meralda copied it onto her paper, and then set about finding its secrets.

Donchen, clad now in the waistcoat and leggings and shiny buckled shoes of a nobleman of old, raised Kervis’ hand and smiled.

“Right foot, left foot, turn, pirouette,” he said.

Kervis stumbled, trying to stand tip-toe in his guardsman’s boots. He frowned and looked down at his long, flowing ball gown.

“I don’t think I like this dream,” he said.

Meralda lifted her head from her desk and shook it, trying to wake.

Mug turned his eyes toward her, whole again. “None of that, mistress,” he chided, waggling vines at her. “Someone went to considerable trouble to bring this dream about. Please sleep just a few moments longer. It’s important.”

“Indeed,” said Tower, from inside the glass. “A fanfare, if you please.”

Mug sounded a fanfare, complete with trumpets and drums.

Footfalls sounded from the shelves. There came the sound of a door slamming shut.

Meralda rose and whirled to face the shelves. My back aches,
she thought.
My arm is numb where I slept on it. I can’t be dreaming.

Tim the Horsehead stepped into the light.

“You are, indeed, dreaming,” he said. He turned his equine head so he gazed at Meralda through his right eye. “Though it is a singular sort of dream.”

“Tim the Horsehead couldn’t speak.” Meralda sagged. “It is just a dream.”

“I can speak perfectly well in dreams,” replied Tim. “May I come closer?”

Meralda shrugged. “Please do.”

Tim approached.

Meralda watched. He’s wearing the robes of office,
she noted.
The very same clothes depicted in his portrait in the Gold Room.

“Well, I’m working with your memories, after all,” said Tim. He moved to stand two short steps from Meralda. “We’ve been very impressed with you, you know,” he said. “All of us. We look in from time to time.” He raised a gloved hand and pointed at Mug. “He’ll be fine, by the way. You needn’t worry.”

Meralda pinched her side.

It hurt.

Tim remained, perfectly solid, not the least bit dreamlike.

He smelled of cologne Meralda couldn’t name. His muzzle was whiskery and going grey.

Beneath the cologne, Meralda realized he smelled very faintly of…a stable?

Meralda’s heart began to race. What if this is really Tim, somehow?

“We? We who?”

Tim curled back his lips in a horse’s toothy grin. “We former thaumaturges. All this time, thinking the Tower was haunted, when it is this laboratory that is full of ghosts.” He made a sound somewhere between a whinny and a laugh. “The very walls in this place are infused with old, old magic. We mages leave a part of us behind.”

More figures stepped from the shadows between the shelves. Some solid, some faded and ghostlike, some little more than shadows themselves.

None moved far from the dark.

“We know of the threat to Tirlin, and your efforts to stop it. We salute you, Mage Meralda Ovis. As not just one of us, but the best of us.”