Fallen Blade 04 - Blade Reforged (12 page)

Fei sighed rather resignedly and fell in behind me. “He’s not just any librarian.
He’s a serious mage. According to my sources he’s been the head librarian here for
more than a century.”

I smiled. “Really, you don’t say….”

“You knew that?”

“I’m an assassin. I hide in the dark. I listen. I know lots of things.”

Fei laughed. “But not as many as a librarian?”

“No. Not this one, anyway.”

Fei fell silent and nothing more was said for a few minutes while we finished climbing
the steep and narrow back stairs. The main set out front was eight feet wide and sheathed
in marble, rising in a beautiful double spiral. I led the way to the reading room
and ushered Fei in ahead of me. There were little seed cakes and spring rolls as well
as the tea.

Fei poured for both of us, then leaned back and put her calves on the corner of the
table as she began to sip hers. “Oh, before we start, I presume the librarian is listening
to every word we say?”

“I expect so, but he’s very good at keeping secrets. He’s known I’m a Blade since
before I killed Ashvik, and I’ve never heard any hint that he’s even whispered it
to another soul. I trust him.”

“Good enough for me, under the circumstances. So, tell me about this other Blade hiding
in the shadows at the council meeting, and about Devin and Sumey, and why it all
means the Son of Heaven might be involved. When you’re done, I’ve got some stuff to
share with you as well. Or, would you rather start with this”—she dropped my note
on the table—“and whatever happened back there on the bridge?”

I put my own calves up on one of the other chairs and sipped my tea. It was a delicate
jasmine flavored concoction and just as awful as every other cup of tea I’d ever tasted.
The spring rolls on the other hand…

“This.” I picked up the note and used a simple cantrip to burn it to ash. “It’s more
immediate and we can always come back to the Son of Heaven.”

“Fair enough.” She took a seed cake. “These are fabulous, by the way. Do you think
he’d share his recipe?”

“I wouldn’t bet on it. Secrets.”

“Pity.” Fei stretched and sighed. “Is it just me, or do you feel really at ease and
secure for the first time in ages?” She paused and suddenly looked less so. “Spell?”

“Possibly, though I think it’s just the Ismere. Harad once told me that in its entire
history there’s not a single record of the Crown or anyone else violating the integrity
of the library.”

A voice spoke out of the air, “I said that no one has ever
successfully
violated the integrity of the library. Many have tried over the years. One reigning
queen even.”

“What happened to them all?” asked Fei.

But her only answer was the silence of the library and perhaps the faintest echo of
a quiet little laugh.

“That’s almost as creepy as you sneaking around in the shadows,” said Fei. Then, “Do
you think he’d be willing to help out with our little problem with Thauvik?”

I thought about it for a moment. “No. I don’t think that he likes to take action beyond
the bounds of the library. If there is a civil war and it directly threatens the Ismere,
he might intervene, but I don’t see it happening short of that or beyond the immediate
threat to the library.”

“Too bad. But, you were about to tell me about that little band of marauders you ghosted
on my back trail.”

I nodded. “I presume Scheroc gave you the basics?”

“Yes, though he’s a bit hazy on things like who it was you ghosted and how many of
them there were to start with. He
was
quite firm about you letting two of them live. He’s always happy to deal with numbers
low enough that he can count them successfully, and he doesn’t really do well above
three. I love him dearly, but he’s a much more limited sort of elemental than your
Triss.”

At the sound of his name, Triss shifted from my shape to his own, though he remained
on the wall behind me where the reading light painted him, and said, “Don’t count
him so lightly.”

Fei shook her head and smiled. “I don’t, but I do know his limitations…like counting.”

I grinned. “There were six. Rehira, four of her people and a ’puller, name of Eight
Dogs.”

“That’s not news I like to hear,” said Fei. “Rehira’s not cheap, and she’s not stupid.
She wouldn’t take a job on me without major backing and some sort of surety there’d
be no reprisal from the Mufflers once I was gone. Who hired her, and who’d you let
live?”

“Some heavyweight noble paid the undertaker’s bill, at least according to Eight Dogs.
He’s one of the survivors. The other was muscle and I didn’t get her name.”

Fei’s eyes went far away and she held up a hand to stop me from saying anything more
for a few moments. Finally, she nodded. “The Count of Uron’s youngest cousin, probably.
The lean and hungry one. That’ll be the result of the Lord Justicer’s speech this
morning.”

“I think I missed a step in there.”

“Under normal circumstances, the Count of Uron would succeed his aunt as Duke of Tien,
since she had no children of her own. This cousin, the baronet of something or other,
has had his eye on the ducal seat for years. He even went so far as to try to issue
challenge to the old duchess on one occasion. She’s surprisingly spry for seventy
years old, or she was anyway. She sliced his larynx without bleeding him out—a very
neat piece of sword work—then told him he’d
better not come within a hundred miles of the city ever again. Now, with the duchess
gone and Thauvik saying that all successions will happen in the normal fashion, he’s
going to want another crack at it.”

“And, if he succeeds, he’ll be the Duke of Tien and the ultimate head of the city
watch. Your boss.”

“My successor’s boss, more likely, if he can manage it. He doesn’t like me any more
than the old duchess…or any woman for that matter. At least not out of the bed or
the kitchen.”

“One of
those
.”

“Yes. You’d think their mothers would strangle them in the crib and save us all the
trouble of having to fix the problem once they’ve grown up. Well, at least you’ll
have given him something to think about by ghosting his chosen assassin.”

“I wonder why he picked Rehira,” I said.

“Probably thought it would be funnier. That, and either way, there’d be one less competent
woman in the world to make him wet his bed. You know, I’m glad you let those two live
for now. It’ll make sure the news gets back to him. I hope you don’t mind that I’m
going to have to track them down and kill them both in a few weeks.”

I shrugged. “Not my lookout. I refrained from killing them. I didn’t promise no one
else was going to hold them to account.”

“Okay, that’s settled. Now, tell me about this Blade at the council and why that means
church involvement.”

Where to start…?
“What do you know about the fall of the temple and the destruction of my order?”
I said, after a beat or two.

“Not much, to be honest. Not beyond the official story anyway. You know it well enough,
I’m sure. The current Son of Heaven felt there was evidence that Namara was a false
goddess. So, as chief priest of the eleven kingdoms, he went to petition the gods
in the person of the Emperor of Heaven to do something about her. Then, when the gods
agreed and decided to execute Namara, the Son of Heaven sent his
forces to destroy her temple and put her followers to the sword. But that’s all I’ve
heard. I guess it never really interested me.”

“That’s just rot…I…oooh, fire and sun!” Triss was all but snarling with rage.

“Triss,” I said, “hush. Fei’s right. That’s the official story, as you well know.”

“I do, but every time I hear it, it makes me so angry I want to tear a hole in the
world and toss the Son of Heaven’s entire corrupt operation into it.”

Fei looked curious. “Could you really do that?”

“Not the entire church,” said Triss. “Not all at once anyway, and probably not the
buildings, but I could certainly make a good start on sending the priests and soldiers
off to fall forever through the everdark.”

Fei looked a question at me and I nodded. “I saw him do it once. It’s not a clean
death.”

“Remind me not to piss off the Shade.”

“That’s always a good choice. Here’s how the fall of the temple looks from our side
of things. We’re quietly working away at doing the bidding of our goddess. We make
sure that justice applies equally to all and generally see to it that the worst excesses
of the powerful don’t go unchecked. Suddenly, an army shows up on the temple doorstep
and starts killing everyone in sight. The priests and Blades are crying out to our
goddess to protect us, but nothing happens because while the human army of the Son
of Heaven is murdering my people, the other gods are murdering my goddess.”

I got up and started to pace. I simply wasn’t capable of sitting still while I talked
about these events. “But that’s not the whole story. I wasn’t at the temple when the
attack happened or I’d be dead now. So, I didn’t find out any of what comes next until
last year, when I helped Maylien against her sister and Devin.” I’d learned more since
then, but not anything I was willing to share with Fei. “It seems that at the fall
of the temple the Son had his people offer a deal to all the Blades they managed to
capture. If they were willing to
transfer their allegiance from Namara to him, he’d let them live, even have some autonomy.”

Fei whistled. “Him personally, not Shan?” I nodded. “How many took the deal?”

“I have no idea,” I replied.

“Because that’s the kind of news that would have an awful lot of people looking over
their shoulders. Blades serving the Son of Heaven, and freelancing when they’re not….
If there are more than a half dozen of them, that would completely change the blood
trade. Pricing of assassinations, options on the sorts of targets no one is willing
to try right now, cost of bodyguards…everything!” Her eyes went far away. “I wonder
if it’s already happening….”

I raised an eyebrow.

“The great khan’s heir fell off his horse and broke his neck about two weeks ago while
hunting on the Avarsi plains,” said Fei, then nodded when she saw my expression. “And
no, you’re not the only one who finds that
very
hard to believe. But he was riding with friends and his full bodyguard. They all
agree no one was anywhere near him when his horse stumbled and threw him, and none
of the mages saw any hint of spell-light. They searched but couldn’t find a slink’s
hole or anything else that would have tripped the horse either.” She looked speculatively
at Triss. “Could you do that? Make a hole into this everdark thing for a horse to
stumble on and then make it go away later without showing magic?”

“Not without dropping Aral’s shroud, but I wouldn’t need to do it that way,” said
Triss. “If Aral were willing to get in close and have only partial cover for a time,
I could just grab the horse’s leg. Much easier to do, and not half so dangerous.”

“I don’t suppose the khan’s heir had recently said anything nasty about the Son of
Heaven?” I asked.

“Funny you should mention that. It happened about two days after the heir claimed
the entire theoarchy of Heaven’s Reach was built on land stolen from the people of
the Kvanas. He also said he’d make the Son pay tribute for it when
he took the throne. The Son is calling the heir’s death the judgment of the gods on
an impious man.”

“That’s…” I couldn’t find any words strong enough to express how sick that made me
feel.

I quite literally wanted to vomit. If one of my former colleagues had been a part
of that, it was perversion of everything the goddess had created us to be. Somewhere
in my head I’d known things like this must be going on. It was the only reasonable
conclusion to be drawn from what I’d learned from Devin, and later, from Kelos. Somehow
I’d been able to put it aside in a dark corner of my mind with so many of the other
things that hurt me, like my current worries about Jerik’s torment.

But I couldn’t avoid it any longer. After what felt like ages of trying to say something
and failing, I put my face in my hands and squeezed. Triss didn’t say anything either,
wrapping shadowy wings around my shoulders and resting his chin on my head instead.

After a couple of minutes, Fei coughed quietly. “Are you just going to sit there moping,
or are you going to kill the bastards that make you feel that way?” A pause. “I’m
good either way, but I suspect you won’t be.”

It wasn’t the most gentle and loving nudge I’d ever received, but it got the point
across. “Right.” I pressed the heels of my hands against my cheeks one last time,
then opened my hands and raised my eyes to meet Fei’s.

“There,” she said. “That’s much better. If I hadn’t been expecting that death stare,
you might have even made me jump a bit. So, if these rogue Blades of yours are working
for the Son now, and they’re helping Thauvik out, why was your, ah…onetime colleague
Devin trying to put Maylien’s sister on the throne last year?”

I shrugged. “That’s a great question, and I have no idea what the answer might be.
Could be that things have changed since then in the Son’s thinking. Could be Devin
was freelancing at the time. Could be the Blade at the council is freelancing now.
Hard to say without more evidence. The key thing is that Thauvik has a Blade up his
sleeve.”

“Yeah, that’s going to make things a lot tougher for the leaders of the coming rebellion.
Speaking of which, I have a number of messages that I’ve been asked to pass along
to the Baroness Marchon should I get the chance. There are a lot of nobles who think
it’s way past time Thauvik took a long rest in a pretty wooden box, and not only the
lesser lights.”

“Nothing in writing, I presume.”

Fei rolled her eyes. “You jest, right? I’m supposed to deliver them in person, of
course. I was going to ask that you have her meet me somewhere in the city so that
we could talk. After tonight though, I’m thinking it might not be a bad idea for me
to make it very clear I’m still among the living and deeply pissed. Then I should
probably vanish for a little bit. That will get a few hearts beating faster. I presume
Maylien’s gone into hiding in the wilds again. Can you take me to her?”