Bookworm III (40 page)

“I’m leaving immediately after breakfast,” Cass said. “I suggest you depart at the same time and head straight for the tunnels. Don’t look back.”

“Understood,” Elaine said. “And you?”

“I’ll see what happens,” Cass said. It dawned on Johan, suddenly, that she wasn’t expecting to return. “Don’t worry about me.”

The serving girl returned with a large plate of toast, a small knob of butter and a large pot of jam. Cass eyed it doubtfully, then sniffed it and shook her head. Johan sniffed it too and winced at the smell. It wasn’t
bad
, but it was far too strong to be anything other than a cover, meant to conceal something else. Instead, he took a piece of dry toast and nibbled on it thoughtfully, wincing slightly at the taste. Elaine did the same, but Daria ate her way through several pieces in quick succession. A werewolf could probably cope with something bad better than any normal human.

“Time to go,” Cass said, once they had finished. “Just try to stay well out of sight.”

“We’ll be behind a glamour,” Elaine said.

“Inquisitors can see through glamours,” Cass reminded her, dryly. “Better not to use anything magical, if it can be avoided.”

She rose, then waved to the serving girl. When the girl appeared, Cass pressed two silver coins into her hand, then winked. The girl winked back, then dropped the coins into her pocket and smiled at Cass. Johan frowned as the girl walked away, not understanding the byplay.

“She will probably be expected to share her tips with the staff,” Daria muttered, in his ear. “But if they don’t know she’s been tipped, they can’t demand their share.”

“I see,” Johan said. “Is that fair?”

Daria shrugged. “She won’t have had a proper education,” she said. “That poor girl will have been pushed into the family business as soon as she was old enough to walk, I imagine, just because it is cheaper to use your own family than hiring someone from the outside. And even the toughest of men has a soft spot for a sweet little girl. I’d be surprised if she wasn’t the person who got the biggest of tips.”

“But ...” Johan remembered all the horror stories about life outside House Conidian and shuddered. “But anything could happen to her.”

“That’s life here for you,” Cass said, as they started to walk down the stairs. “Nasty, brutish and short.”

She smiled as they stepped outside, breathing in the air. It smelled of horses and too many people in close proximity, but she seemed to find it wonderful. Johan watched as she pulled Elaine away, then passed her a pair of small envelopes. Elaine nodded, dropped them into her pocket, then gave the older woman a hug. Moments later, Cass hugged Daria too, then reached for Johan and pulled him into a tight embrace.

“Take care of Elaine,” she said. “Do you understand me?”

“I will try,” Johan said. The feel of her body pressing against his was hellishly distracting, if only because no one had ever hugged him so tightly before. Her breasts felt hard, yet soft against his chest. “I promise.”

“Good,” Cass said. She kissed him lightly on the forehead, then winked as he stared at her in shock. “Have a safe trip – and good hunting.”

She nodded to Elaine and Daria, then turned and strode off into the distance.

“Come on,” Elaine said, urgently. “It’s time to go.”

Chapter Thirty-Three

The streets slowly came to life as they hurried towards the edge of the city, where the Iron Dragons were kept. Elaine was almost relieved as more and more people appeared, knowing it would be easier to hide amongst the crowds. With everyone who was anyone – or who thought they were anyone – going to the Arena, it was unlikely the Inquisitors would have time to search the city for a person using glamours. And she knew she could get past any number of soldiers who had no magic.

Unless they’re using protective charms
, she reminded herself.
You might have to trick them on short notice
.

Johan caught her arm as they walked. “What did she give you?”

“Tell you later,” Elaine said. Cass had made her promise to forge a life-charm, then keep the envelopes until she knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that Cass was dead. “Cass wanted me to hang on to them until she rejoined us or she died.”

Johan gave her a sharp look, but said nothing as they moved into the industrial estates. There were fewer people around, Elaine noted; it was easy to deduce that they were either Levellers involved in Hawke’s plan or engineers who had come to hide from the authorities, now that the Emperor had placed the entire city into lockdown. The ruling class had never been entirely convinced of the benefits of Iron Dragons, after all, and had always been doubtful about allowing them to be built. In hindsight, Elaine suspected they might have had a point.

“I used to want to drive one of those,” Johan said, as they walked past the oldest, the original Iron Dragon. It was mounted on a stone plinth and surrounded by protective spells, allowing people to look, but not to touch. “It was a dream of mine.”

“Not an uncommon dream,” Elaine agreed, as they paused long enough to stare. The Iron Dragon was small and simple compared to its successors, but it was still impressive. There was no magic in its construction at all. “The orphans were equally fond of it. I think the guilds had hundreds of applications for workers as soon as they started hiring recruits.”

“The future,” Johan agreed.

“But there will still be a place for magic,” Daria said quietly, as they walked down to the rails. “The world will not change.”

Johan looked doubtful. “Elaine,” he said, “is the magic going away?”

Elaine blinked in surprise. “I don’t think so,” she said. “Why?”

“Hawke said that the magic seemed to be fading,” he said. “That magicians of our time can’t do the impressive feats of magicians from a thousand years ago. That magic itself might be going away, leaving the world dependent on raw muscle and non-magical ingenuity. Is this true?”

“I don’t think so,” Elaine said, slowly. “But ...”

She considered it for a long moment. It was true that magicians had performed great feats during the Necromantic Wars, but many of those feats had been powered by human sacrifice or other, darker, rituals. No single magician could channel enough power to lay waste to a country, not if he wanted to survive the attempt. And such rites and rituals had been banned, then forgotten. The magic taught at the Peerless School drew on a magician’s natural resources, not on outside sources of magic. And she knew, better than anyone, that even it was inefficient. There was no shortage of magicians who might be able to make something of themselves, if they were taught spells that didn’t rely so much on raw inherent power.

“I don’t think the magicians of a thousand years ago hesitated before throwing people under the blade to be sacrificed,” she said, finally. “These days, human sacrifice is taboo – and with very good reason.”

“The Emperor killed children,” Johan reminded her.

Elaine nodded. Feeling the rite, even at long distance, had been horrific. She didn’t
know
what the Emperor had had in mind, but she knew she wouldn’t like it when she found out. It was why, she admitted to herself, she hadn’t tried harder to talk Cass out of her suicide mission. The former Inquisitor was the only one of them who might have a chance at killing the Emperor ... and, if he was prepared to dig up rites from a thousand years ago, the Emperor had to be stopped. No one knew better than Elaine just how close the human race had come to destroying itself.

“Yes,” she said. “He did.”

She wondered, suddenly, what a world without magic would be like. No Witch-King, true; magic, powerful magic, was all that kept him alive. But there would be no werewolves, no vampires, no dragons ... even though no one had seen a dragon in centuries, there were still legends of good and evil dragons that echoed down the ages. And for the wizards who considered their destruction a good thing, there would be no spells, no wands, no Peerless School. Everyone would be equal ...

But we wouldn’t be equal
, she thought, sourly.
We’d just move to different ways of measuring strength.

It was a bitter thought. She knew she wasn’t strong or pretty ... all she really had on her side was intelligence and magic. It had been enough to pluck her out of the orphanage and give her a job, but without it ... she knew she would have been lucky to find work in the Golden City. Johan would be able to beat up his brother, without worrying about being turned into a toad, yet what would that do to him? How long would it be, she asked herself, before the aristocracy of magic was replaced by the aristocracy of violence?

She jumped as she felt someone prod her arm. “Elaine?”

“I’m sorry,” she said, as she looked up at Johan. “I was just drifting away.”

“We should be waiting here,” Daria said, as she nodded towards the rails on the ground. “I think the barricade is just up ahead.”

“Over there,” Johan said, pointing to a small workshop. “We can wait there.”

Elaine nodded, then looked towards the Watchtower, looming over the city. It was an ancient building, old enough to predate the Inquisition itself, and heavily protected. No one had managed to slip in or out of the Watchtower without permission; no prisoner, no matter how skilled, had managed to escape the cells below the brooding fortress. Cass had been right, Elaine knew; a thousand years of magicians testing and retesting the defences had sealed all the cracks. The Watchtower was as close to invulnerable as any non-personalised fortress could become.

And Hawke had come up with a daringly simple scheme that would bring it crashing down in flames.

She honestly wasn’t sure if she should be pleased or horrified. On the one hand, she knew it had to be done; on the other, the Watchtower was the symbol of magical supremacy. If the Levellers managed to destroy it ... what would it mean for the future?

And what
, she asked herself,
if it kills Dread?

But there was nothing she could do, but wait.

“Don’t worry,” Daria said, as they settled down. “Either it works or it doesn’t.”

“How very precise,” Johan muttered, with heavy irony.

***

Cass had known there was no point in trying to use any form of magical glamour as she approached the Arena. Elsewhere, it might be considered bad form to try to peer through a person’s glamour – particularly a girl’s – but the Inquisitors wouldn’t let anything like that stop them. And they would definitely recognise her if they saw her without any disguise at all. She’d solved the problem by nipping into a hairdresser’s and having her hair cut short and dyed black, then walking into a clothes store and picking something more suited for a sixteen-year-old girl trying to impress her first crush than an Inquisitor. It was unlikely anyone would bother to look for anything below the surface when she was showing off so much skin.

The Arena itself was surrounded by people waiting to pass through the protective wards and find their seats. Cass smiled to herself as she found a magical family, then smiled at the oldest son, who couldn’t have been more than nineteen. He promptly forgot his little sisters in favour of chatting to a desirable girl, telling her about all the advanced and complicated magic he’d learnt at the Peerless School. Cass kept her face under strict control as his bragging grew more and more elaborate, even though it was unintentionally hilarious. In her desperate quest to make something of herself, she’d mastered such spells a year or two ahead of him.

But it did help her walk through security. The guards checked wands – Cass had replaced hers with a simpler wand after leaving the Inquisitors – and then waved them through the barriers, clearly assuming that Cass was just one of the family. She didn’t bother to correct them, nor did the parents, who were watching their eldest son with an indulgent eye. Her parents would have been less amused, she was sure, as they found seats and settled down, but then her parents had always been more controlling. They would never have allowed their children to speak to a member of the opposite sex without carefully briefing them on precisely what they should and should not say.

She sat down next to the young man and looked down at the Arena ... and froze. A large stone statue stood in the centre, next to a wooden podium. Vlad Deferens hadn’t just defeated the Grand Sorceress, she realised; he’d turned her to stone, then placed her in the perfect place to bear witness to his triumph. Cold hatred spread through her body as she promised herself bloody revenge, then she looked at Light Spinner again. The practice of surrounding one’s house with the petrified bodies of one’s former enemies had gone out of fashion centuries ago, because the spells sometimes wore off or were removed. And if Light Spinner was still awake and aware in her stony prison ...

“It’s going to be a great moment,” the boy said. Somehow, Cass had managed to miss his name in all the bragging. Or maybe he hadn’t mentioned it. If his family had been one of the Great Houses, she would have known him by sight. “We have an Emperor again!”

“I suppose we do,” Cass said. She sighed, then settled back into her seat and pasted an interested expression on her face. “But what do you think that means?”

***

Charity had only been to the Arena once, apart from the time she’d taken Light Spinner’s statue to Lady Aisling. It wasn’t something that had impressed her; indeed, she knew she’d only gone because her father had been unable or unwilling to take Jamal. Watching men kill each other on the sands hadn’t excited her; it had disgusted her. Magic could turn people into toads or stop them dead in their tracks, but it didn’t leave people bleeding to death on the sands while people cheered or booed. Well, it
could
, yet what self-respecting wizard would bleed his opponent to death?

The Emperor, on the other hand, seemed equally bored with the Arena, but for a different reason. His chatter, which she had been trying to ignore, was all about the need for
real
challenges, about the need for real tests. What was the point, he asked, of a place where healing spells could cure anything that wasn’t immediately fatal? Charity had asked if the druids actually allowed people to gain more experience, if only by learning from their mistakes, but the Emperor had sneered. People were meant to live with their mistakes, he’d snapped, if they weren’t fatal. It was how they served as an example to everyone else. By the time they reached the Arena, she was feeling thoroughly depressed.