City of Bones (30 page)

“They had it when we caught them trying to escape,” the subcaptain said, watching them carefully. “Tried to get rid of it by throwing it over a wall.”

“I was trying to save it from the thieves, who were chasing us,” Elen said, looking unconcerned. “Your vigils frightened them away. Better late than never, I suppose,” she added, and the subcaptain winced.

Ecazar turned back to Arad. “Did she get this book from you? What is it?”

Arad took a deep breath, obviously at a loss, and Elen said, “It’s my book.”

“Yes,” Sagai said, unruffled. “She brought it to show Scholar Arad, on the Master Warder’s orders. It had to be done tonight.”

“Exactly what I was about to tell you,” Arad added, folding his arms triumphantly.

Ecazar’s brows drew together in frustration, and he stared around at them all suspiciously. Khat kept his mouth shut; they had muddied the well enough without his help.

“And what about this?” Ecazar asked finally, holding out the winged relic. “Where did this come from?”

Elen drew breath to claim it, stopped at a warning cough from Sagai. Ecazar smiled. “Of course it can’t be yours, Warder. You asked Arad-edelk if he had it today. And Arad denied it.”

“I did…” Arad began. “I did deny it, because …”

“Because the thieves dropped it in their search,” Sagai finished for him. “That’s how it came here, Master Scholar. Obviously it was stolen from someone else earlier tonight. An astonishing coincidence, since we had looked for it all the day. Better give it to Elen, so the Warders can take it to its rightful owner.”

“Yes,” Elen agreed. “That would be best.”

“ ‘Best,’ ” Ecazar sneered. “You’re lying. Tell me the truth, Arad. These people broke in here to steal relics from you, relics you bought from some illegal source and were concealing from your brother scholars, and you were interrupted by another group of thieves.”

Khat couldn’t help himself. “Getting a little complicated, isn’t it? Every thief in the city, here on the same night?”

Ecazar’s glare was sulfurous.

Arad shook his head stubbornly. “These people are friends, here to consult with me on a matter of importance. The thieves have escaped. That is all I will say.”

“If you maintain that lie, then on your head be it. I’ll see you lose your charter over this, Arad.” Ecazar turned to go.

Elen blocked his path, holding out her hand. “The relic.”

“Oh, I think not,” Ecazar said, looking down at her. “If it was dropped here by thieves, then indeed it must be stolen, and should be returned to the Trade Inspectors. And you, there is no reason for you to be within our gates, and …” He hesitated, and Khat knew he wanted to order Elen to leave, but he had no real authority over her, and she didn’t look inclined to forget the fact that she was a Warder simply because he shouted at her. Finally he said, “I suggest you take yourself off, Honored Warder, and be more careful about the company you choose.” He glanced at the vigil subcaptain. “Continue the search. And post guards on this house to make sure no more thieves visit here tonight.”

He strode for the door, and the vigils trailed out after him, the subcaptain last.

“Impossible man,” Arad fumed when they were gone. “Because I was born on the Sixth Tier, he thinks he can get away with this. He’s dying with envy because of my mural, that’s what it is.”

Sagai said softly, “Trade Inspectors. That’s all we need now.”

“We have to hurry,” Khat agreed. “Constans was here himself. That’s why Elen threw the book at those vigils.” He went to Arad, who was still seething with indignation, muttering to himself about overbearing pedants. “Arad, where is Ecazar taking that relic?” He kept his voice low so as not to be heard by any vigils who might be lingering in the hall.

“I don’t know.” The scholar shrugged helplessly. “To the Trade Inspectors … ?”

“No. If he does that, it’s over.”

“Khat, it’s over
now
,” Sagai pointed out reasonably.

“No,” Elen said suddenly, her eyes alive again. “He’ll want to examine it first, and he’ll have to send a servant to bring the Trade Inspectors.”

“To his rooms in the Porta Major, that’s where he’ll take it,” Arad said, perking up. “You’re not thinking—”

“If we go there now, I can get inside and steal the relic back before Ecazar even knows what’s happened.” Khat nodded to himself. “It’s a good thing they missed the block; we’d never get that back without help.”

“I always knew he was mad, and now I have proof,” Sagai muttered.

“We can do this,” Khat insisted.

“That’s what frightens me the most.”

Elen turned toward Sagai. “Please …”

“Is it worth our lives, Elen?” Sagai asked her, his voice harsh. “The Trade Inspectors will be involved now. You know more than you’ve told us, and I think the time for secrets is past. Is it worth our lives?”

“I don’t really know more,” she insisted, and gestured helplessly. “It’s only speculation, but it’s worth
my
life, and I’m going, even if I have to go alone.”

Sagai cursed, shook his head, and said, “Fine, then, let’s hurry off to be killed.”

Arad caught up a lamp and led the way out of his workroom and down the steps to the empty square. Two vigils watching the doorway looked up in surprise at their appearance, and one called, “Scholar, where are you going?”

Arad drew himself up, a picture of abused dignity. “I am conducting these people to the gate. I assumed that is what Scholar Ecazar wanted. Why? Am I a prisoner in my own chambers?”

The vigil waved them on, and they heard him mutter to his companion, “I was only asking.”

They crossed the empty square, Arad leading them down one of the courts that would take them to the main gate but also to the Porta Major. Down the narrow byways they could see the lamps of the vigils, searching in vain for more thieves. Khat wondered if he was acting the fool, risking everything for no good reason. But whatever he might say to Elen, he knew she wouldn’t exaggerate out of hysteria; if she thought the return of the relic was worth her life, then she really believed it to be true.

Behind him, Elen was anxiously asking Sagai, “You didn’t tell Miram that we were coming here, did you? Not where anyone could overhear?”

“Am I mad? To tell my wife I was breaking into the Academia? Of course not.” Still piqued at having to act against his better judgment, Sagai was making up for it by being as difficult about the whole thing as possible.

“We didn’t tell anybody,” Khat told her impatiently. “What are you getting at?”

“I told Riathen.”

Khat stopped so abruptly Sagai ran into him. They both stared at Elen. Khat said, “You didn’t.”

Elen stopped too, and nodded. “I did.”

Arad-edelk noticed they weren’t following and hurried back to them, asking anxiously, “What’s wrong?”

Elen motioned at him to wait. She said, “I told him because I wanted protection for us. If we were caught, they might let me go, but they would never … And if you both could say you did it with the Master Warder’s knowledge … But that doesn’t matter now. I told Riathen everything. Almost everything. I told him we went to see Radu, before we went back that night, I mean. Don’t you see?” She gestured agitatedly. “Constans didn’t follow us to Radu’s house, no more than he followed us to the Academia. Someone told him. Someone overheard Riathen and me, or Riathen told someone else, someone close to him and trusted, and that person betrayed him to Constans.”

Sagai clapped a hand to his forehead. “Oh, that’s a relief. We may live after all.”

“What?” Past her agitation, Elen looked annoyed that her revelation hadn’t been granted more fanfare.

“Stop telling Riathen everything we do, Elen. Dammit, what goes through your mind?” Khat didn’t wait for an answer. He stalked off, Arad catching up with him to lead the way.

Following, Sagai said in a low voice, “This is much better. I didn’t want to say anything, but I thought this Constans was spying on us with his powers, seeing all our actions in the bones, or some such.”

“I did too,” Khat agreed, quietly. And he had far more reason to believe that than Sagai did. It would be wonderful if Constans’s ability to follow him came only from a spy within Riathen’s camp.

Elen caught up with them, fuming. “You don’t understand what this could mean to Riathen.”

“Who cares?” Khat said, setting off Elen’s temper and ending all discussion for the moment.

They reached the turning where one long passage led to the Academia’s outer gate and the other led deeper within the jumbled maze of buildings to the Porta Major. The vigils were still searching the outlying areas, and none were here in the quiet center. Khat stopped Arad when he would have followed them, telling him, “You’re in enough trouble with Ecazar as it is.”

“But I could be of some use,” the little scholar protested. “I could keep watch, or perhaps there would be something where my skills—”

“No, you’d just be risking yourself for no reason.” Someone had to stay and protect the block relic, and someone had to finish that mural, and it was better done by Arad than some fumble-fingered crony of Ecazar’s.

Elen said, “Yes. If we’re caught, go to the Master Warder and tell him everything that happened, everything we said.”

“About the traitor in his house,” Arad said gravely. “Will he believe me?”

“Just tell him what I said; he’ll know you’re speaking the truth. Please,” she added more softly. “I can’t do this with a clear conscience unless I know you’ll tell the Master Warder what happened.”

“Why is a clear conscience necessary?” Sagai asked, not helpfully. “All it takes is a confused sense of duty and a disregard for personal survival.”

“Elen will enjoy herself more with a clear conscience,” Khat told him. He asked her, “Are you done? Can we hurry?”

“Just be quiet,” Elen snapped. “You two are worse than Gandin, Seul, and Riathen all put together. This is a nightmare.” She turned back to Arad. “Will you tell the Master Warder for me?”

“I will, Honored. Have no doubts. But I won’t have to, because I’m sure all will go well.”

Khat wished he was as sure of that. He let Elen get a little ahead as they went down the long empty passage between the closed, sleeping houses and the open galleries of the teaching forums, and said quietly to Sagai, “Shiskan son Karadon didn’t want to kill us.”

“I noticed,” he answered, frowning. “I wagered my life, and yours, on that supposition at one point. Odd, isn’t it? Why such forbearance?”

“They killed Radu, and he didn’t even have anything they wanted anymore,” Khat pointed out.

“Did they kill Radu?”

“They were there. But so was I, and Elen.”

“A point to consider.”

“What are you saying?” Elen whispered, pausing to wait for them.

“Nothing.”

They came to the open square at the center of the Academia, and paused in the shelter of a columned portico. The Porta Major had been the entrance to the Academia decades ago, when it had been only a small collection of buildings and a tiny garden. The two arches one could pass through into that garden, now an elaborate confection of fountains and rare plants instead of simply a shaded place for teaching, were still there. Above them were two levels of rooms, with a scrollwork parapet on top. To each side was a round tower, one four stories high, the other three, both topped with an onion-shaped dome and a gold spire, with wide arched windows and arcaded passageways on the upper floors open to the evening breeze. The bottom levels were also ornamented with columns and arches, but they had been left walled shut with stone for defense. The remains of the old walls to either side had long since been incorporated into new houses for scholars.

The doors had been shut tightly for the night, except for one at the base of the shorter tower, open and guarded by a circle of lit ghostlamps, ready for the vigils to catch up as they ran out. As Khat watched, one came to the door and looked out, an air gun slung casually over his shoulder, then turned back inside.

The Master Scholar’s quarters were on the second level above the arches, between the two towers. As Khat watched, a lamp was lit behind one of the windows. Yes, Ecazar had returned, given his orders, and taken his find up to his rooms to gloat over in private.

“Are we going to climb up the outside?” Elen whispered.

Khat would have to go up this side to reach Ecazar’s room, but the square was too well lit, the Porta’s face too exposed. “No, I’m going in through the door. You and Sagai are going to create a diversion.”

“Create a diversion?” Sagai objected. “If I’m going to be a criminal, I want to be in the thick of things, not waiting outside. It’ll be a fine thing when we’re brought before the High Justices and all I can say is ‘I created a diversion.’ I might as well be at home.”

“I wish you were,” Khat said. Sneaking into Arad’s quarters had been enough of a risk as it was, and they were lucky the scholar had decided to throw in his lot with them. If they were caught now, after Ecazar had ordered them out, it was thievery pure and simple, and no lie of Arad’s or political pull from Sonet Riathen would help them. “If you do this right we won’t be brought before the High Justices.”

Elen asked doubtfully, “What kind of diversion?”

That was a good question. Khat hesitated. The things he could think of—Elen demanding to speak to Ecazar again, Sagai pretending to be a scholar and calling out that there were thieves somewhere— all seemed to be inadequate or to end with it being completely obvious who had taken the relic. And there was the gate problem.

Ecazar had ordered them to leave, and it was only in deference to Elen’s standing that he hadn’t ordered the vigils to throw them out. Now either Elen and Sagai had to go through the outer gate without him, which would be suspicious to everyone but a simpleton, or all three of them would go out after a long, equally suspicious interval, or they could bypass the gate entirely and go over the wall the way they came in, making the truth still more obvious. And Ecazar was probably waiting, even now, for news that the gate vigil had let them out. It was like the puzzle of the man trying to cross the canyon with the goats and the grain sack. He explained the problem to the others.

Sagai pursed his lips. “It’s difficult. We are already under suspicion.” That he couldn’t see a way around it either was worrisome; he was far better at logic than Khat, who tended to think on the run.

“Well, fine, then,” Elen said, sounding tired. “There’s something I can do. I can go out the gate alone, and make the vigil think you and Sagai are with me. Then Sagai can shout that there are thieves, distracting the men here and letting you slip in. Then both of you can go out over the wall with the rope.”

She didn’t sound very confident, or enthusiastic. Khat had seen her use more unnatural magic tonight than ever before, something she had been afraid to do even when they were trapped in the Remnant. He asked, “You can’t do that with a simple, can you? You have to use Ancient magic.”

“Yes. Are you afraid I’ll go mad?” she challenged.

“No, are you?”

“No. At least, not very,” she admitted, after a moment. “I don’t feel as if I’m close to going mad. I feel tired and frustrated and angry with Ecazar for stopping us when we’re so close. But I suppose I wouldn’t feel it until it happened.”

“You aren’t engendering confidence in us, Elen,” Sagai pointed out. “What we want to know is, are you sure you want to do this?”

“Yes, I’m sure. Drawing a veil over the sight is the least difficult of all the workings to do. At night, it’s almost as easy as a simple.” She hesitated, perhaps remembering that sometimes her simples failed too. “There won’t be anyone here to see through it, unless Constans turns up again.”

Khat had been thinking about Constans. He knew Warders were supposed to be able to read thoughts, or at least the loudest thoughts, on the surface of the soul. But Constans had been standing only a few steps away, taunting Elen about not “soul-reading” well enough to know Shiskan and the others were there, yet he hadn’t realized there were two copies of the text, even though that had certainly been the uppermost thought in Khat’s mind. And Khat remembered where else he had heard that term today. “Elen, today at Riathen’s house they said they couldn’t soul-read me, so that proved I didn’t have a soul. What did they mean?”

Elen rubbed her eyes. “Soul-reading is like a sense you have of a person’s presence, sometimes their intentions, or the thing that’s most on their mind at the moment. And it’s not always possible for Warders to soul-read at all. For instance, most of the time I can’t read Sagai, but at the moment I can sense that he thinks that you shouldn’t be bringing this up now.” Sagai looked startled. She added, “And we guard against being read by each other. But no Warder can soul-read a kris. I know I certainly can’t, though I wouldn’t judge it by me, because apparently I’m no good at it.” She took a deep breath. “They were just being rude.” She turned away, going alone toward the gate, being careful to stay in the shadows.

Sagai asked softly, “You think she’s all right?”

Khat shrugged, not wanting to closely consider the possibility that she wasn’t. He had never taken Elen’s fears too seriously before; she was too careful, and the last person one would expect to misuse her power and fall into madness. Now he hoped these relics were as important as Riathen and Constans thought they were, at least for her sake.

They waited, giving her time to reach the gate and work her trick, and for the Porta’s residents to settle down after the earlier alarms. They couldn’t afford to wait nearly as long as Khat would have liked; there wasn’t that much of the night left, and the vigils who were searching the grounds might come back. He noticed the lamp in Ecazar’s window stayed lit.

Sagai meant to start his diversion further back in the courts, to give himself better opportunity for slipping away from the vigils. Before he went to look for a likely place Khat gave him charge of the rope; if he was caught inside the Porta there was no reason to trap them both here.

After giving him enough time to get in place, Khat made his way around the edges of the open square before the Porta. He reached the tower with the ghostlamps set out by its door, and just before their light would reveal him he stepped into the deep shadow at the base of one of the ornamental columns.

There was a hoarse shout somewhere down one of the courts leading into the main way—Sagai, not sounding very much like himself, doing a good imitation of an aging scholar rudely awakened. “Help! Thieves! Thieves in my rooms! Help, vigils!”

Two vigils burst out of the open tower door, catching up a lamp from the stoop and racing to the rescue. An old door servant came out after them to the edge of the lamplight, stumbling as if he had just awakened, and peered shortsightedly into the dark. Khat slipped along the wall and through the door, easily.

This was evidently a guard room for the night vigils. It was bare and swept clean, with empty lamps stored on shelves above heavy water jars, and the scattered counters of an interrupted game of tables in a corner. Two doorways led off to more rooms, and one to a narrow stair, curving up into the floors overhead. Someone called out from the next room, wondering loudly what had happened. Khat was up the steps, past the first turn and out of sight before the door servant stumbled wearily back in to answer.

Pausing on the stair and trying to hear if there was anyone moving above him, Khat swore softly. The Academia obviously didn’t see this kind of excitement every night, and there were more people still awake than he had counted on. There was no help for it; he had to get the relic back tonight, before Constans or the Trade Inspectors got their hands on it.

No footsteps or voices sounded from above. He went up to the next landing, which led into the first floor of the section that bridged the two towers. It was lit by hanging oil lamps, and one wall was lined with windows looking down on the great dark space of the garden behind the Porta, the other with curtained doorways. The back of his neck prickled with the thought of someone stepping out suddenly.

Behind him he heard someone coming down the stairs from the upper floors of the tower. He stepped back against the wall and eased the first door curtain aside. A little light from an uncurtained window fell on the doors of a bronze cabinet and a low table with a clerk’s pens and ink bottles abandoned on it. He stepped inside and pulled the curtain to just as whoever it was reached the landing and came down the passage.

Footsteps from the other direction, then from the hall a woman’s voice asked softly, “What was that shouting about?”

He didn’t stay to hear the muttered answer, making his way silently across the room to the window. Obviously the Porta was still too awake to chance making his way up through the inside. He would have to risk climbing up to the floor above from the outside, and simply hope no returning vigils crossing the square looked up.

Outside the window the ledge was broad, its edge an entablature that ran the length of the facade. He climbed out and stood cautiously, leaning back on the wall to get his bearings. The scrollwork around the windows was of fine stone that didn’t crumble. He hauled himself slowly up to the next floor and sat on the ledge there to rest.

In the square below, the two vigils Sagai had decoyed were returning, shaking their heads, lifting lamps high to peer into dark cubbies and alleyways, but never looking up at the face of the Porta. Some more vigils appeared out of another alley, and they all consulted, pointing in different directions and arguing, then broke up and disappeared down various courts for more searching. Khat took this as a good sign; if they had caught Sagai, they would have appeared considerably more elated. He began to make his way down the ledge toward Ecazar’s window.

He crouched in the shadow just to one side of it, where the gauze curtains didn’t do much to impede his view but hid him from anyone casually glancing out. The room was large but not luxurious. The matting was sun-faded, and much of the wall space was taken up by bronze cabinets holding books and the notes and journals of past scholars.

Near the center of the room, Ecazar sat before a low table piled high with bound folios. He held the winged relic in one hand, unfolding the pages of one of the books with the other. Squinting, Khat saw that he looked through pages of scribbled notes, diagrams, drawings.

He’s recognized something about it
, Khat thought. The scholar was obviously searching for some information about the relic.
He wouldn’t do that if he thought it was just another decorative plaque
. Well, Ecazar wasn’t the Master Scholar for nothing. Khat would have given a great deal to know what he thought of the winged design.