City of Bones (27 page)

Elen studied the scholar thoughtfully. She said, “It isn’t illegal to buy a relic. There isn’t even any shame in it. But what you bought is a very dangerous relic to own.”

Arad was stubborn. “I don’t buy relics from the Fourth Tier. I buy from gleaners.”

Elen hadn’t said anything about Radu living on the Fourth Tier. Khat cleared his throat, hoping she would notice the slip. She glared horribly at him again, so he supposed she had.

Sagai hadn’t appeared to be listening; he was studying the mural as if he meant to memorize every inch, but now he glanced up at Arad and in a tone of polite disbelief said, “You bought this wonder from Eighth Tier gleaners?”

Arad’s eyes narrowed, and he didn’t answer.

“Radu’s dead,” Elen added quietly. “He was killed because of the relic he sold you.”

“That means nothing to me. You must have the wrong scholar. I ask you to leave, so I can return to my work.”

“You have to listen to us,” Elen persisted. “You could be in great danger.”

“You have the wrong man,” Arad repeated stubbornly. “You must leave.”

Khat stood. “It’s not doing any good,” he told her. “Let’s go.”

Arad eyed them both with that same wary caution.

Ecazar didn’t deign to reappear, but the older scholar returned as they left the building and conducted them back to the gate in silence.

“He wasn’t surprised,” Elen said quietly, once they were outside the Academia’s walls. “But why did he deny it?”

“If he bought relics from Radu with Academia tokens, but concealed them from the other scholars, he could surfer for it,” Sagai said. He shrugged. “It’s a common enough practice, but it can be used to oust scholars who become unpopular with their superiors. The question is, did he already know the relic was dangerous to own?”

Elen shook her head, unable to answer.

The sun was almost directly overhead now, and few people were out. Most of the scholars and students had vanished from the colonnade, and the peddlers had retired under robes tented up to provide shade. Khat and Sagai turned by habit into the narrow street that led back into the area of the relic shops.

“He’s got it in there with him, somewhere,” Khat said. “We have to go back tonight and find it.”

Elen stared. “You mean, enter by stealth?”

Even Sagai was startled.

“If we pound on the front gate, I don’t think it’ll do much good,” Khat said.

“I don’t like it,” Elen protested. “If we’re caught, Riathen would have to intervene for us and everything would come out. That is, if he intervened for us. He couldn’t risk the Heir’s part in this being revealed.”

Khat glanced down at her skeptically. Riathen would intervene for her, he was sure of it. He doubted the Master Warder would lift a finger for Sagai or himself, unless he thought he still needed them. That was why he meant to arrange things so Sagai would wait outside the Academia.

“I’m not happy with it either,” Sagai said, “but I can’t see any other course.” He glanced over at Khat. “How are you so sure we can get inside?”

That question would take some answering. As Khat was considering how much to say, a hooded figure stepped out of the alley they were passing and brushed past him.

A familiar hooded figure.

Khat turned and ducked his head, seeing nothing of the knife but the sun’s flash on steel, the slash that should have opened his throat missing by inches. Off balance, he fell against the alley wall, shoved away from it in time to miss the return stroke aimed for his eyes.

Sagai had pulled Elen out of the way, and now he started toward their attacker. Akai shook his hood back. His hard eyes were angry, but his lean face revealed only rapt concentration. He said, “Stay out of this, dealer. Lushan isn’t interested in you.”

Khat motioned Sagai back. He didn’t want him involved in this, but his partner had bought him time to draw his knife. He eased forward, and Akai circled leftward so he could keep Sagai in sight. Out of the corner of his eye Khat saw Elen backed up against the wall of the alley. From the way she was standing he knew she was thinking about trying to use her painrod. He hoped she stayed out of it. Akai was too fast, too vicious for one of those cumbersome weapons.

The smartest thing to do at this point in a knife fight was run away. But neither of them had any intention of doing that.

Akai feinted and came in high, going for the neck again. Khat stepped in under the blow, and then they were on the ground. Akai’s knife was trapped against his side; Khat felt it biting into his ribs. He drove his own blade home, and Akai screamed.

Khat rolled away from him. There was blood all over the ground, and it took him a moment to realize little of it was his. Akai was scrabbling in the dust, gasping for air. Khat’s blade had caught him in the upper thigh, where the big artery ran close to the skin. He was trying to stanch the wound, but every beat of his heart was forcing out more blood.

Elen was leaning over Khat anxiously. “Are you badly hurt?”

The blade had torn his shirt and drawn a long shallow cut along his ribs. Khat shook his head. Akai had lost the fight when he failed to kill him with the first attack.

“We have to go,” Sagai was saying. “Trade Inspectors could be here any moment.”

A death fight on the Fourth Tier, this close to the shops, would be considered an impeding of trade. Khat struggled to his feet. He had had two fights today, one for his pride and one for his life, and he wasn’t looking for a third.

They went down the alley, crossed a second, and down another. Sagai stopped at a fountain in a quiet court where most of the inhabitants seemed to be either away or asleep. Elen threw some copper bits at the old fountain keeper before he could even stir off his bench and dipped her scarf in the water. She handed it to Khat, who used it to scrape off a little of the dust and blood. “Who was that man?” she demanded. “Why did he want to kill you?”

“That was Akai. He works for Lushan,” Khat told her. “I was expecting him to turn up sooner or later.”

Elen was still confused. “The man Miram said came to your house?”

“Yes.” Sagai was looking down at Khat with a determined expression. “And there is something I want you to explain.”

Khat shifted uneasily. It was too late to avoid this by pretending to be more injured than he actually was.

Sagai said, “I thought Lushan sent his bullies after Ris to make you work for him, and that you were reluctant to admit it. Is this true, or is it because he wants you to work for him
again
?”

Khat looked into the fountain. “When I first came here, I did a lot of things I don’t do now.” Since he was being truthful, he added, “And I enjoyed them, too.”

“Stealing for Lushan?” Sagai was grim.

“That was one of them.”

“Then why did you stop?” The question came from Elen.

“I didn’t like it.” There was no sport to taking things when the owners were asleep or absent, too much danger for little return when they weren’t. It was easier by far to find relics of your own under ruined buildings or in sewer outlets and middens. But Khat had had more sense than to try to explain this viewpoint to Lushan.

Elen looked skeptical. “Is that all?”

“No,” Khat admitted, in the interest of telling the whole truth. “I got caught.” He looked up at them. “I was in a Patrician house on the Third Tier. Lushan knew there were some fine relics there, and he especially wanted the
mythenin
incense urn they were supposed to have. I didn’t expect it to amount to much. Those are almost never found intact, unless they’ve been repaired with lousy Survivor-work metal. But when I found it… intact, openwork lid, gold inlay with a floral design.” He saw Sagai struggling not to seem interested. “They had it in a cabinet with a bunch of Survivor pots and fake crematory jars.” He turned to Elen. “In the Enclave you can’t own relics. They belong to everybody. Nobody can take one away and hide it and say no one else can look at it.”

Sagai folded his arms. “Khat. You read three languages. You’ve been to most of the Fringe Cities. You have the Trade Articles of Charisat memorized, and you’ve forgotten more about the Ancients than half the supposed relic scholars in the Academia will ever know. Don’t try to tell me that you didn’t understand what you were doing.”

“Well, no, I knew what I was doing,” Khat admitted. “Their vigils were more alert than I thought, and I got out of the house, but I couldn’t get down off the roof. I went over a couple of houses; then they took a shot at me and I had to duck in through a window. There was a man sitting on the floor, writing by lamplight. It was Scholar Robelin.”

“Ah,” Sagai said. “I wondered how you had met him.”

“The vigils came to the door, but he wouldn’t let them in, and he said he hadn’t seen anybody. Told them shooting at windows in the dark was a poor way to insure the safety of honest citizens. They left, and he gave me a lecture on why I shouldn’t be up on the Third Tier stealing. I’d read what he was writing by that time, and it was a treatise on relics found near the Remnants, so I showed him the urn, and we had an argument about whether the designs on it were related to the Battai murals. They weren’t. The background design is in a similar style, but it’s coincidence.”

“What makes you say that?” Sagai asked, then caught himself and shook his head. “Never mind, go on.”

“He said he wanted me to come to the Academia and help him work on the Remnants. That was the first time I’d had any chance of getting in there.” Khat shrugged. “He didn’t have to help me. So I gave him the urn.”

“Wait,” Elen said. She was still confused. “He lectured you about stealing, but he accepted the stolen urn?”

Sagai frowned at her. “An intact
mythenin
incense urn? Of course. He would have to be mad to refuse.” He turned his attention back to Khat. “And Lushan, I suppose, wanted you to pay him its value.”

“He’s crazy. It wasn’t his. I could give it to whoever I wanted. But he never got over it. Sometimes, to make him leave me alone, I’d take something for him. I haven’t done it for a long time, though, because we were so busy. I paid him finally, but it just made him madder. That’s crazy for you.”

“Let me make sure I understand this,” Elen said carefully. “While we are searching for these relics that could make the difference in life or death for all the Warders living now and all the generations of Warders to come, you are carrying on a private war with this… this … jumped-up Fourth Tier thief?”

“What did you expect me to do, drop everything because of your business?” Khat asked her, exasperated. “And I told Riathen at the time he shouldn’t have hired me.”

Elen buried her face in her hands, apparently fighting for calm. “I understand perfectly,” she said finally. “Did you ever consider that perhaps Lushan didn’t go crazy until after he met you?”

Khat ignored her. He was watching Sagai carefully. “Still partners?” he asked.

After a moment, Sagai sighed. “Who else would have you?”

Khat told Elen and Sagai that they couldn’t possibly consider entering the Academia until after the fourth hour of the night. This was true.

It also gave him time to make his next move in what Elen called his private war with that jumped-up Fourth Tier relic thief.

The loss of Harim and Akai would cause an upset in Lushan’s household arrangements, and the broker had never been particularly cautious anyway, relying on fear of retaliation to keep thieves away. Now the time was right, Khat decided, for one or two enterprising young professionals to try their luck on Lushan’s vast store of relics. Especially if they had advice from someone who had been in the rooms the collection was kept in, and could describe the house to them. And Caster would be just the one to arrange it all.

Khat found him in the Arcade, just as it was closing down for the night. They retreated to one of the highest levels, dangerous from weakened supports and holes in the flooring and always deserted, while Khat laid out his plan and drew the different rooms of Lushan’s house in the dust.

While Caster was figuring everyone’s percentage from the possible take, Khat looked across the Arcade, shadowy from the gathering darkness outside and growing quiet as the noise from below faded. He hadn’t heard anything. He might have seen something, just at the corner of his eye. “Did you see anything?” he asked Caster.

“No.” The Silent Market dealer scanned the area suspiciously. “Did you?”

“No.” Khat shrugged it off. Lushan had more enemies than any other broker in Charisat; it wasn’t likely he would suspect Khat of planning this, and he would hardly be able to report the theft to the Trade Inspectors—too many of the relics in his house were stolen, and bribes would only protect him so far.

“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.