Authors: Kelly McCullough
Broken Blade (4 page)
“Two conditions.” I tapped the pouch, which lay right where I’d left it. “Double the fee, and tell me where you got that dress.”
“For the first, done.” She reached into her bodice and pulled forth a second identical pouch along with two sheets of tightly folded and sealed parchment. It made me wonder what other treasures she might have tucked away in there. “The delivery has to happen tomorrow night, five minutes past the tenth hour bell. Wait by the fifth window from the right on the back balcony. The recipient will be there.”
“At the Marchon city house?” I wanted us clear on terms.
She nodded and rose from her chair with a smile.
“And the dress?”
“Why, I stole it, of course.” Then she turned and walked away.
2
Maylien
had barely made it through the front door when Jerik slid out from behind the bar and came my way. He was a big man with a thick patch of scar tissue where his left eye and about half his scalp used be. When asked about it, he always pointed to the gryphon’s skull hanging behind the bar, and said, “The other guy got it worse. I nailed his sorry ass to the wall.”
had barely made it through the front door when Jerik slid out from behind the bar and came my way. He was a big man with a thick patch of scar tissue where his left eye and about half his scalp used be. When asked about it, he always pointed to the gryphon’s skull hanging behind the bar, and said, “The other guy got it worse. I nailed his sorry ass to the wall.”
“Work?” he asked me.
“Looks like.”
“Pay up.”
I tossed him one of the pouches. “Put half on my room tab and the other half toward the bar bill. That ought to pay both forward a bit.”
Jerik glanced into the small bag and smiled. “That it will. Shall I get you a fresh bottle of the Kyle’s?” He snagged the empty as he asked.
I really, really wanted to say yes, and I might have if not for the gentle pressure I felt rippling all along my back, where my shadow lay against my flesh, like dozens of disapproving centipedes marching angrily from my hips to my shoulders and back again. I shook my head regretfully.
“Not tonight, I’m afraid. The job.”
Jerik shrugged casually and turned away. I might be done drinking for tonight, but he knew I’d come back whenever the work ran out. For the second time in an hour, I ducked out the back door into the dark of the yard. This time I went into the stables and up the ladder that led to the loft and the tiny room I’d been renting for the last two years.
There was no light above, just the musty-dusty scent of last summer’s hay and near-perfect darkness. The hay made an unattended lantern too risky, and Jerik wasn’t going to waste the cost of a magelight on the likes of me. Not that it mattered. I’d been trained by the temple priests to operate in the dark from the age of four, when they first took me for the order.
I made a show of fumbling with my key when I got to the door though I was alone and there was no light to see me by even if I weren’t. The priests had taught me to
live the role
, a lesson quite as useful for my jack work as in my old trade.
live the role
, a lesson quite as useful for my jack work as in my old trade.
While I scraped at the door with my key, Triss did the real work. Effectively invisible in the darkness, he climbed and enfolded my body, sheathing me in a nearly transparent layer of shadow, like a smoky second skin. It felt a bit like being wrapped in icy silk. Then he extended the portion of himself that covered my right hand, sliding a tendril of hardened shadow into the keyhole. Through our temporarily shared senses I could feel/taste the tumblers and the spell binding them as he twisted the extension of himself to release both.
The door opened with a barely audible click, and I slipped into the even darker room beyond, closing and locking the door behind me. It was a far better lock than the room demanded, Durkoth work and damned expensive. But I valued my privacy.
Reaching up, I touched a shadow-gloved hand to the small stone globe I’d mounted above the door—its magic visible in magesight as a dim green spark. That released the spell of darkness binding a tiny but very bright magelight and illuminated my room. It was more the habit of a lifetime’s training that had made sure of the door before I exercised my power than any real worry about being discovered there and then.
Stretched thin as he was now, Triss did little more than darken my skin by the same degree a few hours in the noon sun might achieve. Of course, those who had been trained to observe might also have noticed that when I went clothed in shadow, I cast none, not even in the brightest of light. Fortunately for me, individuals with such training were exceedingly rare.
The small magelight revealed a narrow room tucked under the slope of the eaves, with my pallet wedged into the corner where steeply slanted ceiling met rough plank flooring. The only other furniture was a low table and, beside that, a small trunk that doubled as a bench. A tattered and much-stained rug prevented any glimmers of my magelight from leaking through the cracks between the planks to the stalls below.
Except for its shape, the room wasn’t all that different from the cubicle the priests had given me at the temple complex all those years ago. Well, that and the fact that my old cubicle now lay under several hundred tons of rubble surrounded by acres of barren fields sown with salt by the forces of the Son of Heaven. I pushed the thought aside, but not without a sharp pang of regret at turning down Jerik’s offer to bring me another bottle.
Triss squeezed me in a sort of whole-body hug, then relaxed onto the floor, taking his otherworldly senses with him and returning me the semblance of a shadow. If said shadow belonged to a small dragon, of course.
“Thank you for taking the job,” said Triss.
I shrugged and knelt to rub a finger along his jawline—as always fascinated by feeling scales and warm, living flesh where my eyes showed nothing but shadow lying on a threadbare rug. Even in that shape, he had some substance to him. “You’re all I have left, and you wanted me to. How could I deny you?”
The shadow of a dragon ducked his head abashedly. “I worried that the way she lied to you and concealed her magery might drive you to turn her away.”
“Magery?” I closed my eyes and rubbed the lids for a long moment. “You didn’t mention
that
part earlier, only that Maylien was more than she seemed. Perhaps you’d better elaborate now.”
that
part earlier, only that Maylien was more than she seemed. Perhaps you’d better elaborate now.”
“I know she wasn’t showing any visible spells, and I couldn’t spot her familiar. But when she first leaned over you, her shadow fell across me and it tasted of mage gift—very recently used, or I wouldn’t have been able to detect it.” He cocked his head to the side thoughtfully. “She probably had her familiar wait for her outside, though it’s possible she’s allied with a lesser spirit of some sort, and it was simply invisible.”
I suppressed a desire to growl at Triss. But we’d done more than enough fighting for one night. “Well, if she is a mage and a noble, it’s no wonder she’s hiding her familiar, whatever it is.” Perhaps something that left scars on your shoulder when it perched there? A hawk maybe, or an eagle? But it really wasn’t important. “The Zhani take a dim view of their peers using magic. They claim it distorts the whole challenge system of succession.” Which it did, and that might explain why she had to come to me in disguise.
I sat down on my trunk and wished I had a drink handy. The last thing in the world I wanted was to get mixed up in Zhani high-court politics . . . again. I still had the scars on my leg and the price on my head from the last time, a decade ago. I massaged my temples.
“Triss . . .”
“I know. I should have told you. You’re not going to back out of the job, are you?”
“No, I took her money, and it’s not like I really expect clients to tell me the truth. You, on the other hand . . .” I sighed. “Next time you taste magic on someone’s shadow, signal me secretly, and we’ll go talk about it.” We both knew he ought to have done so this time, but I let it slide—he’s a willful sort of creature when he wants to be and quite possibly smarter than I am. “No more of this jerking around like someone poured a cupful of shadow ants into your shadow pants, all right? It makes you look like a twitchy tyro.”
“I . . . You . . . I never . . . Hmmph.”
Triss relaxed back into my shape, raised shadow hands to shadow ears like a set of antlers, then rudely wiggled his fingers at me, effectively terminating the conversation.
Gotcha.
I grinned and went to reshade the light. I’d need a solid ten or twelve hours of sleep if I was going to refill the wells of magic and be at my best for tomorrow’s delivery.
Gotcha.
I grinned and went to reshade the light. I’d need a solid ten or twelve hours of sleep if I was going to refill the wells of magic and be at my best for tomorrow’s delivery.
I
got up late in the afternoon and killed time while I waited for the sun to go down by alternating shadow-fencing with Triss and pretending to read a book I had “borrowed” from the Ismere, a wealthy merchant’s lending library. It was a ridiculous adventure story set in the long-destroyed realm of the Necromancer, which used to lie on the northern edge of the mage wastes. I was so distracted by thoughts of Maylien as mage and wondering what her real game was that the words just flowed through my head without leaving any real imprint. I vaguely gathered there was something in this most recent chapter about methods for strengthening various breeds of the restless dead, but that was about all I got out of it.
got up late in the afternoon and killed time while I waited for the sun to go down by alternating shadow-fencing with Triss and pretending to read a book I had “borrowed” from the Ismere, a wealthy merchant’s lending library. It was a ridiculous adventure story set in the long-destroyed realm of the Necromancer, which used to lie on the northern edge of the mage wastes. I was so distracted by thoughts of Maylien as mage and wondering what her real game was that the words just flowed through my head without leaving any real imprint. I vaguely gathered there was something in this most recent chapter about methods for strengthening various breeds of the restless dead, but that was about all I got out of it.
When the sun finally fell within a handsbreadth of the horizon, I snapped the book closed with real relief and hurried back up to my little room. There Triss wrapped himself around me, and we opened the spelled lock I kept on my trunk—another bit of Durkoth work. The Other smiths were the best in the world though I couldn’t afford any but their cheapest pieces.
From the inside I pulled a matched pair of battered short swords, straight-bladed and double-edged, with simple cross hilts and the blades darkened for night work. Decent smithwork, but not fancy and nothing like as good as the pair of curved temple blades they’d replaced. I checked their fit in the hip-draw double back sheath I’d had made to replace my old temple-supplied shoulder-draw rig. Then I set the whole on the pallet.
Working clothes came out next, and I put them on as I went. Shirt first, then loose trousers cut very full in the leg and tucked into soft knee boots, all in nondescript shades of gray—the sorts of things any Zhani peasant might wear. Crushing the oris plant made for an easy dye and a cheap one as long as you didn’t want to concentrate it enough to make a true black.
A heavy belt with a short, plain knife went on next, followed by my broad, flat trick bag. Then my sword rig, with its straps and darkened steel rings for attaching other gear—left empty for the moment. Finally, I pulled on a dark green and much-stained poncho. It smelled of old wool and fleabane and came down far enough to cover the hilts of my swords. Over that I added a traveler’s hood to complete the picture.
Triss watched quietly from the wall opposite the open window, content to sit where the westering sun put him though he did retain his dragon shape. After I finished dressing, I had only one task left before we could leave—reading the letter. I didn’t trust Maylien, and even if I did, I wasn’t about to walk into a job any more blind than I absolutely had to be. I set the folded parchment on my little table and pulled a six-inch strip of flexible copper from my trick bag.
“Triss, could you give me a hand?”
The little dragon flowed down off the wall and back along the fall of my shadow to puddle around my feet before slithering up my body and pressing himself tight to my skin. For work of this sort I needed very fine control, so Triss subordinated his will to my own, putting his mind into a sort of waking dream that tracked but could not direct our joint actions. His physical self—inasmuch as a shadow can be said to have such a thing—now moved to my commands, a necessary condition for most higher-order magic, which needed to be guided by a single will.
The mage and his familiar are like the swordsman and his sword. The swordsman makes the swing, but the sword delivers the killing blow. The raw stuff of magic, the nima, comes from the mage, power drawn from the well of his soul, but without a familiar to provide a way to focus and deliver that power, nothing happens.
I directed that part of me that was temporarily a thing of animate darkness outward, enclosing the thin metal tool in shadow and charging it with magic. In my magesight, the strip of copper took on a bright blue glow. Then I slipped it under the edge of the seal on the letter. Through Triss’s senses, I could taste dye and bees and turpentine in the wax of the seal but no concealed magic, which made things simpler. With a tiny flash of power, I separated it from the parchment without hurting either.
Unfortunately, Maylien, or whoever had prepared the letter, had anticipated the possibility of seal lifting—one of the easiest of the gray magics. The exposed pages appeared as blank as if they’d come fresh from the stationer. That made exposing any message significantly harder. There were easily a dozen magical means of blanking the pages, ranging from a fairly simple charm of concealment up to a destruction-primed soul key, though most of those would leave some visible light of magic on the page. The wrong sort of spell could as easily wipe away what I wanted as reveal it, and I couldn’t tell enough about this one to decide on the right approach. Time for a second opinion.
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