The Mirrored City (36 page)

His stomach lurched as he came to a sudden halt mid-air.

He noticed Maddox, sprawled awkwardly in the back of a hay cart, covered in straw and bleeding on his face. He held one hand toward the sky. Lyta was next to him, still gazing about in confusion. Every single person on the street was staring at them. A wide-eyed child pointed from behind his mother’s skirts. “Look, Mom! He’s magic!”

Maddox lowered Heath to the ground.

“You lived.” Heath smiled.

Maddox groaned. “I’m full of surprises. And fragile bones. A little help?”

“We have to get Shannon!” Lyta shouted desperately.

“Go,” Heath said, placing his hands on Maddox and spreading the Light through his body to his injuries. Maddox had superficial cuts from the rough straw. His injuries weren’t that bad, all told.

“It’s lucky you landed in a bed of straw,” Heath said.

“Not for the guy who owns the cart.” Maddox crawled out of the back. “And it wasn’t luck. I moved it.”

“You acted quickly on your feet.” Heath patted Maddox on the shoulder. “I’m proud of you.”

“Don’t…” Maddox warned.

Heath didn’t push the issue. Maddox would come around eventually. But it was good to see him back to his angsty former self. It meant he didn’t need the Sword anymore, and Heath could get his partner back into a reasonable body.

A thin man with a pinched face and spectacles pushed through the crowd. Heath recognized the man as the innkeeper from the Freedom House. “Sirs? Are you both okay?”

“We’re fine, thank you so much for your concern. It’s a funny story, actually. We were wrestling on our balcony, and it got a little carried away.”

“Thank the Host you’re unharmed.” The man breathed a huge sigh of relief. He leaned in a bit closer and whispered in a trembling voice, “Well, there’s no delicate way to put this. It’s not that we don’t value your business, but some of the staff, well, we fear for our lives. Please… I humbly beg you, vacate your suite. I have children.”

“We’ll leave tomorrow.” Heath smiled and shook the man’s hand. “First light.”

Lyta ran out of the building, hand clutching the hair above her forehead. “She’s gone… again. You said we’d be safe.”

Maddox crossed his arms. “He lied to you. It’s what he does.”

Heath put his hands up. “We don’t have time to argue. We need to find Shannon and quickly.”

“What about the Sword?” Maddox asked. “It’s still in the bookshop.”

“The Sword will live. Shannon and Soren might not.”

“But we know where Sword is. Shannon and Soren could be anywhere.”

Lyta bit her knuckle. “Ohan’s mercy, if she’s alive, she would have contacted us.”

“The thing knocked her head against a wall; she could be unconscious.” Heath put his hand on her shoulder. “We need a plan. Lyta, go get the Sword—don’t touch the hilt. I need Maddox to look at something and try to figure out where they took her. If Shannon reaches out through me, Maddox will tell her where to look for you.”

Maddox and Lyta glared at each other.

“I need you two to trust each other on this. Lyta can handle Daphne. She’s done it before.”

He locked eyes with Lyta. Her cold stare and subtle nod told him everything he wanted to know. She would choose justice over mercy. He led Maddox back to Shannon’s suite.

Maddox paced through the scorched and shattered wreck that was Lyta’s quarters. The leather-bound journal Heath had recovered from the Asylum hovered in front of the wizard. Pages flipped as he studied them, one hand under his chin, one resting under his other arm. His intense green scowl looked like it could have bored a hole in the parchment.

“Can you make yourself useful and find an unbroken bottle of wine?” Maddox asked. “I can’t focus with you staring at me with those creepy silver eyes.”

Heath looked at the broken lattices on the wine rack. It had been pretty well depleted before the chimera had hurled Lyta into it. A drink sounded tempting, but Heath needed to stay sharp. Every second was critical.

“Oh.” Maddox froze as he leaned in closer to the book.

“What does it say?” Heath came around behind Maddox.

The page was covered in an ancient language Heath guessed was early era Macerian, mixed with some modern Archean letters. He wasn’t fluent in either, but he trafficked in enough ancient artifacts to recognize it.

“Fuck…” Maddox said slowly as the page turned to another page filled with illegible scrawls.

“I can’t read that, Maddox.”

“It’s arcane formulas for ritual magic.” Maddox shook his head as he looked to another page. “Rituals aren’t really my area of study, but this looks like legit calculations for a massive storage and release of theurgy.

“The bodies themselves, a cow made with an udder out of dicks, are just theatrical props. There’s real magic going on here.” Maddox started pacing again.

“So… you’re saying the Dark Rite could actually work.”

Maddox nodded. “The math is insane and they’d need a shitload of energy, but whoever’s doing this is channeling fear and pain into a vessel. Not just the fear and pain of the victims, but the fear these grisly scenes instill in people here in the city.”

“The murders go in order of the Dark Ecliptic. I think we know who the twins are.” Heath ran through the scenarios in his mind. “What happens if the ritual completes?”

“Ever seen a Harrower in person?” Maddox asked.

Heath crossed his arms. “I have.”

It was a memory he tried to keep locked away. The warlock Riley had sent one to invade Heath’s mind back in Rivern. They say the creatures become your worst nightmares and the things they show you are so horrible it burns out your eyes. His vision had been that of his mother, healthy and glowing. The sound of her soft voice returned to him.
Oh sweet baby, you are hurting. Let Mamma help you. This world is sick and full of pain. Please join me…

“Forgot about that. You’re the only man alive today to survive an attack,” Maddox said. “Based on what we know, you should be mostly immune to a second attempt.”

“Stormlords are also immune,” Heath added.

Maddox rolled his eyes. “Yeah, and they would
never
cover up any Harrowings to appear powerful, being the forthright honest people that they are.”

“We need to shut this down,” Heath insisted. “Give me something to work with. They have to harness the energy somehow, right? They would need a location to conduct the ritual. Does the book say anything about where?”

Maddox flipped to the front page. “No bookplate with a ‘return to’ address. Shocking how little the owner must care for his work.”

“Or her work. We can’t be blind to any possibility,” Heath added.

“You see this penmanship?” Maddox flipped the pages at him and pointed to a long line of scribbled words. “That is most definitely a man’s handwriting, a left-handed man at that. Look at the bar across those characters. The stroke starts on the right and ends on the left. No right-handed person does that.”

“They teach you all that in the Lyceum?” Heath was impressed.

“Before I even got to touch a stylus, I had to master penmanship and graphology. Any irregular or uncorrected motion of the hand can cause a seal to be mistranscribed. So yes, I know what I’m talking about.”

Heath stroked his chin. “I wish I’d known about that. I bet you’d be very good at forging documents. Could have used those talents back in Rivern.”

“Child’s play,” Maddox huffed. “That’s just as insulting as me asking you to assassinate a spider.”

Heath cocked a grin. “I would because I’m your friend.”

“No, you most definitely are
not
,” Maddox said.

“I know it doesn’t feel that way, but I am your friend even if you aren’t mine. I will continue to look out for you.”

“Guides preserve me,” Maddox grumbled and returned to the book. “You should go look for the Protean. She should have been back by now.”

Heath’s brow furrowed. It was unlikely Daphne had posed any challenge, so that left two possibilities. Either the chimera had returned or…

His question was answered quickly enough as Lyta burst in the room, panting heavily. “The Sword and the Abbess were gone when I got there.”

Heath frowned. “Was that before or after you looked for Shannon in the Asylum?”

“How did you?” Lyta gasped. Her eyes told him the whole story.

“It was a risk I took in sending you,” Heath said. “But at least now we’ve eliminated one location. We don’t have a vessel for the Sword anyway—Maddox has proven himself more valuable as he is. We’ve learned a lot since you’ve been out.”

“I thought you would be angry,” Lyta said.

Heath smiled. “I’m not your Patriarch. I choose to trust your judgment. Just because it didn’t pan out, doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t cultivate your instincts.”

Lyta blushed slightly at the praise. “The room was cleared out, completely. There was nothing left. Shannon’s somewhere else. We should have taken her blood the second we found her. I’m so stupid.” She hit the sides of her head.

“She’s alive,” Heath reassured her. “She hasn’t reached out which means she’s still unconscious. They need her to be awake to harvest her fear for the ritual.”

Maddox interrupted, his eyes wide with realization. “Holy shit… I know where they are!”

“Please tell us where,” Lyta implored.

“Diviner Quillian’s parlor,” Maddox said smugly.

“We should go. Now,” Lyta urged.

“Hold up,” Heath said. “How do you know this?”

Maddox grinned. “Because I’m a fucking genius.”

“Maddox, you are the smartest man I’ve ever met. But I’m going to need more to go on than your excitement,” Heath said.

“Well,” Maddox began, “while you were out assassinating and doing politics, Sword and I were working an investigation into these murders, and we turned up a number of clues that just now make sense. First, we learned that some of the bodies were killed in an octagonal room based on a drawing Coroner Isik showed us. Quillian’s parlor had eight sides.”

Heath nodded. “Eight-sided rooms are common for wizards.”

“But what gave it away was the white roses and the left hand,” Maddox said.

Lyta interjected, “What are white roses?”

Maddox clapped his hands. “Exactly! Inspector Collette didn’t know what they were either. They’re the official flower of Velrailles, but they have less alchemical value and weaker fragrance than red or yellow roses, so they don’t get exported. White rose petals were stuffed into Lawrence’s eye sockets. I smelled hints of white rose when I was in Quillian’s salon. I thought it was an undercurrent of the incense, but it could have been from fresh flowers.”

“Maddox has an extremely keen sense of smell,” Heath said to Lyta.

“So not only did Quillian have an octagonal salon, it smelled of white roses. He also had a maimed little finger on his left hand which would account for his sloppy penmanship.”

“So Quillian’s the killer?” Heath said.

“He’s officially dead,” Maddox countered.

“We don’t have time for games, wizard!” Lyta shouted.

Maddox shrugged. “Fine. Sword and I found his body, murdered and mutilated but… with the left hand missing. Why would that be?”

Heath reeled with the realization. “By Kondole. His missing finger. The killer wanted to hide it. That would mean…”

“Twins,” Maddox concluded. “Quillian killed his twin brother, or vice versa, but he couldn’t hide the missing little finger so he cut off the hand. It’s him, Heath. The Guides told me, ‘You stepped over the lover’s body when you sought the two-faced killer.’ I thought she meant ‘treacherous’ but it literally meant the killer had two identical faces, and Lawrence’s body was underfoot when I was in Quillian’s parlor.”

Heath chuckled. “Nice work. We need to come up with a strategy.”

Lyta sighed. “There’s… something else you need to see.”

She walked out onto the balcony and pointed up. The Archean sky ship was encased in a rotating sphere of crystalline force. “That happened while I was coming back from Baash.”

“A chrysalis,” Maddox whispered. “That’s Archean protection magic of the strongest caliber. They know something.”