Sourcethief (Book 3) (27 page)

"Father, the staff lets you do that, too?"
Anzik asked.

"No, the staff merely makes it easier. The
control is mine; the staff, but a tool."

"Oh," Anzik said, sounding disappointed.
"Well, I guess we will have to figure out how to fly the ship ourselves. I
didn't pay a lot of attention to how it worked, but we need to pull those ropes
over there to lift the sails, then use magic to make the wind blow in the
direction we want—it isn't already, I don't know where we're going—then use
that wheel over there to turn the other sail—oh, and we need to pull those
other ropes to raise that one first—and then we can use that to turn the ship,
so we can go in the direction we want. The runes there, there, and there,"
Anzik pointed, "do things like raise the ship and lower it. They might do
some other things too, but I wasn't really paying attention. Sorry." Anzik
shrunk back after his apology, as if expecting reprimand.

Jinzan smiled then and did not need to feel his face
to know it. "Thank you, Anzik. That was what I suspected. Have no worry
though, we do not have to fly it ourselves."

Jinzan worked his aether into muscles and bones,
reigniting dead Sources in otherwise intact bodies. He cut the aetherial
tethers loose as he reconnected the minds of his new slaves. They began rising
from the deck as he completed each one.

"Ooooh!"Anzik marveled. "Let me try
one!" Before Jinzan could think to stop him, Anzik Fehr rushed belowdeck,
already drawing aether. There were bodies below as well, but Jinzan had yet to
reanimate them. Jinzan's instincts told him to go after the boy, but after a
single step he stopped himself.
The boy is a natural.
He remembered how
Anzik had reanimated his own pet dog when the beast had died.

Muffled grunts drew Jinzan's attention back to
Tanner, who was lying on the deck clamped in Jinzan's spell. Jinzan released
the swordsman and he gasped for breath, able to expand his lungs fully once
more. Jinzan watched him for a moment and considered confiscating the Kadrin's
sword but decided not to.
Harmless enough.

"I suppose you know better than to try to
escape or do me any harm," Jinzan said. Tanner pushed himself to hands and
knees.

"Rotting bastard, I almost suffocated,"
Tanner managed between gasps. "What kind of deal is this?"

"The kind where you have robbed me of one
hostage only to provide me another. Denrik may have been at risk if you had
tried to slay him, but I am no Denrik Zayne. You will be perfectly safe so long
as you work to bring my son's twin to me. However, I cannot risk returning you
to Kadrin. Let Kyrus wonder where you have disappeared to. I will not risk him
discovering where I have been all this time," Jinzan said.

"You puke-swilling dog, you are as bad as the
rest of them. Denrik at least had a little decency. Give a fella too much
magic, and it happens to all of you," Tanner said. He spat on the deck.

"I can just have someone clean that up,"
Jinzan said. Without a word, a dead sailor walked over and pulled a cloth from
his belt. The dead man bent to wipe Tanner's spit from the deck without
complaint and without his attention wandering from the task to glance at
Tanner.

"Nice to know your side keeps up
tradition," Tanner joked. Jinzan knew him well enough to hear how afraid
he was of the dead sailor's proximity. "Loramar would be proud."

"Ah, Mr. Tanner, you show yourself to be a man
of learning at last," Jinzan said. "I had despaired of ever having a
proper conversation with you. You at least learned your battles."

"Yeah," Tanner said. He pushed himself
away from the cleaning corpse before climbing to his feet. "But you must
know how that turned out for Loramar. I mean, Rashan Solaran was as famous for
the Necromancer Wars as anything, and he won all three of them."

"Loramar never had
this
," Jinzan
said. He tried to raise his voice but it came out choked.

"Father, look!" Anzik called out from
below as he made his way up the stairs. "His name was Sazan and he shared
his bread with me." Behind Anzik came a boy about his own size with a
vacant look in his eyes. "I saw how you were putting the aether back into
the broken men and I did the same to fix Sazan."

"I'd like separate quarters for this trip. I
don't even care where you're taking me, just keep this crew of yours well
clear, and I'll be no trouble," Tanner said.

"Excellent, Mr. Tanner. I like you better in
this world already."

* * * * * * *
*

"You must be running short of important folk to
bother about all this drivel," Axterion groused. "Hardly a word to me
a tenday at a time, but someone slaughters half the empire's simpering
bootlicks and the Inner Circle, and you're here daily, is that it?"

"Something like that," Kyrus admitted.
Axterion snorted. "Besides, you make a lot of sense. I think you play at
being senile because you prefer being left alone. I need you."

"Bout time someone did," Axterion replied.
The old sorcerer bit a strawberry in half, tossing the leafy cap into a bowl
with a dozen others like it, and chewed as he spoke. "You got yourself
quite a quandary though. Got near to everything you asked for, and don't know
what to do with it now?"

"Well, we have peace now, but Rashan is going
to be around constantly. I need some way to find the information I need without
being obvious about the search. I never imagined he would drop the war as if it
were a game of chess he had grown bored of," Kyrus said. He eyed the bowl
of strawberries but decided against the distraction.

"You and that girl of yours are together in the
other world, right?" Axterion asked.

"Yes."

"Maybe you can have her read you the
book," Axterion suggested. "Keep a copy of it over there, maybe. Your
grandmother always kept her really confidential information written down
there." Axterion paused for a moment and turned to frown off into the
distance. He scratched at his head. "At least, she told me she did. No
real way to be sure, of course."

"That might work for one book she has. But what
if it lacks want I need?  I suspect it does. I would rather not have Rashan
stumble across me reading up on demons and how they might be killed,"
Kryus said. He laced his fingers behind his head and leaned back in his chair.
The front legs lifted up off the ground.

Axterion scratched his head. "Well, you can
find some other cause to send him off after. Of course, he's like as not to
start killing everything that comes at him from the corner of his eye, but at
least it wouldn't be you."

"I just got him to stop warring. It would have
to be something entirely different."

"You can get lackeys. I've always been partial
to those, but good ones are hard to sniff out. Most of 'em get snapped up quick
as biscuits, soon as they show any worth. You can train 'em up if you know what
you're doing, and what to look for in a raw one. Or, you could try poaching—you
know, buy one from someone who can't pay as well as you can afford. Of course
that doesn't get you the loyal ones. Best is to find someone with potential
that other folks are overlooking, preferably someone who has some ideals to
hedge against greed. Fearless, if you can manage it, since you don't want a
lackey that can be bullied," Axterion said. Kyrus could begin to picture
what he must have been like as a younger man, still in full control of his
aether. A strong High Sorcerer who commanded respect and obedience, who had
once helped right the sinking ship of a Kadrin Empire that had made many
enemies, one that had lost its warlock protector.

"You know ... I think I may just know where I
can find someone like that," Kyrus replied.

"Oh? Where?" Axterion asked. The old man
waited. Though Kyrus knew him to be nearly blind and reliant on aether-vision,
he still kept the habit of pointing his eyes where his attention lay. Kyrus
waited under that milky, vacant stare until realization dawned. "Oh no,
you don't! I'm retired. I draw a pension from the Imperial Circle and
everything. It's all very official. Besides, I was High Sorcerer for three of
your lifetimes with enough summers left over for an Academy education; I'm well
past being anyone's lackey."

"Covert researcher?" Kyrus suggested.
"I can be flexible on the title."

"It's not just the title—"

"You mentioned your pension. I could certainly
find a way to get you an honorarium for your services," Kyrus offered.
"And I act with the emperor's authority, so on technicalities I outrank
the High Sorcerer. This would not be a demotion, High Sorcerer Axterion ... uh,
Grandfather." Kyrus corrected himself when he noticed the old man frown.

"Thought of everything, have you,
smarty-boy?" Axterion asked, raising his eyebrow. It was an expression
that likely had carried more weight when it had more than a few wisps of hair
left to it.

"No, not at all. The whole of this was your
idea."

"Bah." Axterion slouched back in his chair
and crossed his arms. He snatched another strawberry from the bowl, bit it in
half, and threw the leftover leafy top at Kyrus.

* * * * * * *
*

"Do you think you are up to the task? Your
performance at Founding Day seemed to show your faculties are fully recovered,
but what about the rest of you?" Rashan asked. The warlock sat perched on
the table next to Faolen in one of the palace's sitting rooms.

"I am recovered, certainly. Who is to say
whether I am equal to the task? Does anyone know Brannis's limits? I doubt even
he does," Faolen argued. He fidgeted under the demon's stare.
"Several times a day the city shakes with his transferences. You are the
only other one I have ever heard of using them besides him; not even Dolvaen
trusted them. But he bumbles about most of the time; I doubt he knows a dozen
proper spells. Can he see us even here, from halfway across Kadris and through
warded walls?"

"Yes, yes, point taken, but I shall brook no
cowardice. You are one of my Unfettered, even after your failure with the Staff
of Gehlen. Besides, this is Brannis. He might take up his sword in battle
against goblins or ogres, but he quails at the thought of killing humans. You
are more likely to die by accident around him than by his design. He held
Dolvaen and Caladris both by the throat for nearly a season, and played them against
one another rather than destroying them—or even just putting them before me to
handle."

"What in particular are you trying to
determine? If you could tell me that, I might better recognize what I
see," Faolen said. Rashan looked away, allowing Faolen a moment's respite
from the intensity that rarely left the demon's eyes.

"He is clever; oftentimes I underestimate him,
even knowing that. He runs much of the empire by my arrangement. He has as good
a strategic mind as I have seen, even if he lacks the stomach to plan
ruthlessly. He helps me at every turn and his advice has always proven sound.
He has turned me from my intended path more than once and I have seen that it
was the right choice. Still, for all that, something in my gut tells me that he
might still harbor some plot against me ... that maybe for all the tangled
schemes that I caught Caladris and Dolvaen in, Brannis might have sacrificed
them as pawns in a plot one layer thicker," Rashan said. "Vexed"
was not often a word that could describe the warlock, but the adversarial
relationship with his disciple Brannis could make it fit him.

"I will do what I can. He will be suspicious,
you know."

"Not if you are as good as you tell folk. A lot
of rumors return to me. I have ears under every floor," Rashan said.

"If you have so many ears, what do you need
with mine?" Faolen asked.

"I employ hired ears aplenty, but there is a
shortage of brains between them. You are a sorcerer and twinborn, and you
managed to conceal the latter for a very long time. Just trail him until the
first day of summer. That ought to be long enough to satisfy my worries,"
Rashan said. The warlock put a hand on Faolen's shoulder. He stiffened, afraid
to move.

"Oh, and are you still traveling with that
Megrenn boy's twin?" Rashan asked.

"Yes ..." Faolen swallowed. He had avoided
entanglements between worlds for so long, only to end up caught in the worst
net into which he could have blundered.

"I want to see something ..."

Rashan removed his hand from Faolen's shoulder and
placed it on his forehead.

* * * * * * *
*

The
Starlit Marauder
drifted in bright
sunshine, shielded from view from the ground by dark storm clouds below it.
Everything was dripping from their ascent through the rain. Along the ship's
railing, Ushiqa's children watched the clouds below, oblivious to the wetness.
Juliana watched them anxiously, expecting one to fall overboard at any moment.
They chattered to one another in Safschan, pointing, shouting, laughing. They
knew that their father was alive, though Juliana had omitted Tiiba's bargain
when she relayed the story to Ushiqa. With that one worry laid to rest, they
were enjoying a grand adventure.

Ushiqa came up from below with an armload of morning
feast foods for everyone. She had taken the news in stride, unsurprised that
Tiiba had fought off the infamous demon who had plagued their land.