The Sleeping Life (Eferum Book 2) (19 page)

Smelly moved forward, a barrel of a man grimacing at a hand dripping blood but still looking far too pleased with himself. Kendall longed to wipe the self-satisfied expression off his face, and was astonished when her anger was immediately rewarded, as Smelly glanced at the back wall of the tent and froze, jaw sagging.

It was too much work for Kendall to look. She needed everything she had left to stay awake. It was only after Smelly and Green Scarf had dashed through a second tent flap that she had a glimpse of what they'd seen: a charcoal mask. But by that time Kendall's whole world had tilted and she was preoccupied with the scratchy feel of matting against her cheek. A booted foot came down next to her nose, then went past, and that was it for Kendall until a tugging at her ankle revived her drive to escape and she kicked feebly.

"Not helping."

Kendall cracked her eyelids, and found she was now facing stretched canvas instead of matting. Same tent, same central pole with its chains, but one of the plates holding chain to wood had been pried free. Her feet were propped up on something that shifted beneath them, and fingers…

Opening her eyes properly, Kendall found Samarin sitting on the mat with his mask pushed back and her feet in his lap, wiggling a bit of metal in the padlock holding the cuff in place. It didn't seem to suit, so he reached down to a strip of cloth laid out beside him and exchanged it for another.

"Why do you have all those…keys?" she asked, only just resisting the impulse to kick again. At least until he had the cuff off.

"My role is to go to the places the Emperor cannot, and meddle. I've met a lot of inconvenient locks over the years." He laughed. "This isn't even the first attached to a girl."

So full of himself he was overflowing. And worse, he'd obviously rescued her, though she couldn't quite work out how. The other three—no, two girls and a boy—also lying on the floor didn't stir at all.

"Why did they run away? Did you have the Guard with you?"

He touched the mask covering his hair. "They may have thought I'd a small army right behind me, but even obviously alone, this is often more than enough. The attention of the Emperor. Justice that bribery or threats won't turn aside. And trying to dispose of me would only bring a harsh demonstration of the might of the Kolan throne, since the mask will make the Emperor aware of my death."

His wide mouth twisted, as if he thought all that a bitter joke, then he tried another bit of metal.

"If people are getting snatched right in the middle of the capital's markets, then the might of the Kolan throne isn't all that much."

"Certainly not infallible: someone's being lazy, or deliberately looking the other way. Though I know of no system that will change the nature of those who see a pretty child and covet her."

"I'm not a
child
."

"No? You look about twelve."

"Twelve! I'm sixteen!" she snapped. Then, after a reluctant beat, added: "Nearly."

He lifted his brows, then abruptly pulled on her leg, so that it was no longer her foot sitting in his lap, but most of Kendall. Bending over so that his nose was in danger of poking into hers, he gave her the most obnoxious smirk and said: "Still a child."

Straightening, he dumped her back on the tent's floor and lifted her ankle again. Kendall longed to kick him, but she wanted the chain off more, so she swallowed hard and said instead:

"Better that than a creepy old man pretending he's not even twenty." She hadn't missed that 'over the years' he'd tossed off earlier.

"Oh, I was quite the prodigal," he said, unperturbed. "Indeed, I expect I'm even younger than you think. So what set your tall friend off?"

"None of your business."

"No? Well, I expect she'll tell me herself."

He would ask Sukata too, the scut. And knew Kendall would answer rather than see Sukata be made to talk about a thing that had so severely upset her—particularly now Kendall had figured out the why of it herself.

"It was our latest Sigillic exercise," Kendall said, reluctantly. "Rennyn's not just showing us how Thought Magic works: she trying to teach us to be devising mages, and she keeps telling us to write Sigillics to do the same thing as whatever she's most recently Thought-cast. Not that she's been casting much at all lately, but the last thing she did was make an apple fall into segments.

"The Sigillic I wrote was just something short, and it was no good—likely to make the entire room fall into segments, according to Herself. The Sigillics Sukata and the Pe—and Fallon wrote worked. But even though they were really long, they were identical. The Pe—Fallon said that of course they were the same, because Fan-Fen…"

"Falzenar's Division and Miktok's Restriction," Samarin said. "The most logical combination of Sigillics to use there."

"That's it," Kendall said, eyeing him doubtfully. "And we could all see that Rennyn was expecting us—them—to realise something, but then she sighed, and made a couple of changes to mine, and told Fallon to cast it, and it worked too. Then she told us to go buy instruments."

"Ah, I see. Your Sukata's upset because, flawed or not, you produced the superior Sigillic."

"No," Kendall said irritably, though this was exactly what she'd thought at first. But Sukata wasn't like that. "Sukata really loves magic. She wants to understand it properly, to be a devising mage, and a Thought Mage, and to use Symbolic properly. And yet for every one of these Sigillic writing exercises, she's done just what she did today—stitched together a couple of existing Sigillics that someone else had come up with. Because that's how she's been taught to do it. Rennyn's never come right out and said Sukata and the Pest aren't doing what she asked them to, but she made it kind of obvious today. Sukata's angry at herself."

"Huh." Samarin picked up another bit of metal. "You can't stand to see her criticised, can you?"

"It's just the truth," Kendall told him crossly.

"Perhaps. But it's entirely unsurprising for a well-studied student mage to be annoyed when shown up by some random sprat who has only been studying magic for a handful of months. How do you think she'll react if you make this next step in Thought you're all aiming for?"

What was he trying to get at? "I expect she'd be glad to know it's not just the Claires who can. She's not the type to be jealous."

"Such devotion," he said. "How long is it you've known her again? No, don't kick me, I've a serious point to make. There's a lot of this blinding and immediate loyalty going around. Sentene mages who would walk over glass to defend those assigned to protect them. Rennyn Claire, marrying the first Kellian she meets, all in haste. Diminutive spitfires who don't have a good word to say about anyone, except one particular fellow student. There's a pattern."

"What in the Hells are you trying to say?"

"Why are you such a friend to Sukata Illuma? How did all this steadfast and true companionship come about? Who gained most from it?"

Kendall boggled at him. She and Sukata were friends because they were friends. Because they'd both been picked on studying at the Arkathan. Because together they'd trailed around after Rennyn, and been exasperated by Sebastian, and looked after the pair of Claires after the Black Queen's death. It wasn't about
gaining
…

Yes, Sukata had ended up as Rennyn's student because of Kendall. But that wasn't because Sukata had angled for it.

"They have an extreme vulnerability to magic, you know," Samarin went on. "An innate lack of resistance. Is it coincidence that their service as Sentene brings with it a supply of companion mages? That those mages often go on to become parents of Kellian? Or is this a logical tactic for a people determined to breed out their greatest weakness?"

"You're cracked."

"I'm asking the questions that need to be answered, before Kole can settle her attitude toward a people whose home settlement is, technically at least, within the Imperial borders. Asset? Ally? Threat? There are more ways to invade than to show up with an army at the border."

"Triple cracked and left out in the sun."

"Be that as it may, I would appreciate you giving the question some thought. Have you observed anything that fits with the theory? Anything to contradict it?"

Kendall proceeded to let Dezart Rhael Samarin, Hand of the Emperor, know exactly what she thought of playing snitch for him, but Samarin only smiled, then glanced briefly away before selecting another bit of metal.

"No doubt you will proceed according to your own wonts," he said. "Just perhaps not alone down hidden by-ways."

The inner flap of the tent tore as it was thrust back, but it was not the two men returning. Sukata, long knife in hand, stepped through and stopped short, the Pest peeking anxiously around her.

Samarin finally produced a satisfying click from the padlock and said: "There we go," as he slipped it loose. "Perhaps you two could find one of the Market Peacewards. They should be wearing a red quarter-mask."

Ignoring this, Sukata knelt as Kendall sat up and pulled the cuff off her ankle. "Are you hurt?"

"Just wishing I could twist someone's neck," Kendall said, glaring at Samarin because it was strangely hard to look at Sukata, and not because of any Kellian weirdness with light.

"There was someone wearing a quarter-mask following us anyway," the Pest said, and ducked back out the way he'd come.

"If you were roaming the markets with that knife drawn, I'm not surprised," Samarin said, tucking away his collection of bits of metal.

"Aren't you going to unlock these others?" Kendall snapped.

"I'm sure the Peaceward will enjoy doing that." He stood, slipping his mask down over his face again, and went into the adjoining tent just in time to disconcert whatever a Peaceward was.

"I didn't notice," Sukata said, as soon as I they were alone. "I am sorry, Kendall. That was inexcusable."

"Not your job to look after me," Kendall said.

Can't stand to see her criticised
.

Kendall pushed the smug, sneaking memory aside. "Nice set-up they had, too—that damn cow bell."

This, of course, meant nothing to Sukata, but Kendall wasted no time pulling open the concealed slit in the tent wall and marching back out the way she'd come. No surprise that the red-headed scut was gone, but he'd left his table of wares behind.

Kendall took the entire line of fine-cast bells, each a different size from each other, and tossed her paltry collection of Kolan coin on the table in return.

"There," she said, handing half the bells to Sukata, and refusing by so much as a dropped glance to acknowledge that anything could have upset her. "Whatever Herself wants with musical instruments, this'll surely be more than enough."

She spared a moment to collect the Pest, then led them effortlessly back to the House, shrugging off any suggestion that the Dezart and the Peaceward might want to ask them questions. The one thing Kendall didn't need, at the moment, was more questions from Samarin.

He'd asked quite enough already.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Ten bells. They were ideal for her purpose, and Rennyn adapted her new Sigillic around them, coaching Lieutenant Meniar into casting the result in the house's receiving room. Then she tapped a fragment of a tune out on the set of bells suspended over the Sigillic, and nodded when the sound was repeated, and the casting took hold and settled to waiting.

"I can see it's a divination," Fallon said, watching eagerly. "But I don't understand what you're divining."

"A sound only I can hear," Rennyn said. "Which, in this company, is unlikely enough to suggest that what I am hearing is not sound at all, but some expression of a casting. The difficulty has been producing a divination that did not react to every casting in the area, but only to the one I wanted. It took some time to think of a method for that."

Rennyn could see that something about this excited Fallon inordinately. And then, as happened too often to be coincidence, his fascination cut off and he looked sick, then retired behind her other students to stare at the ground. Rennyn exchanged a glance with Lieutenant Meniar, who nodded briefly. They had been discussing the question of Fallon's health, and the Sentene mage had his own subtle divination operating.

None of her students were at their best at that moment. Of course, Rennyn had raised the problem of over-reliance on set forms with Fallon and Sukata yesterday, and both had been predictably crestfallen. Sukata had then compounded her unhappiness by failing in her entirely self-appointed duty to keep her fellow students safe. Not that she showed much if any of this on her face, but her stance was not as upright as usual.

And Kendall…Kendall was all prickles at the best of times. Since the yesterday's unexpectedly dramatic trip to the market, she become something different: less inclined to talk, more a silent, spiky ball radiating 'leave me alone'. Not, apparently, overly frightened by her near escape, nor simply embarrassed, but shut away and withdrawn. The only thing that roused her was opportunities to glare at Dezart Samarin.

"Enough for the morning, I think," Rennyn said, rising from the couch conveniently situated beside the casting. "Today's assignment for you three is to write a Sigillic to stop a holed rowboat from sinking."

"Should I set someone to watch this?" Lieutenant Meniar asked, offering her his arm.

"No need. At this stage all I want from it is confirmation that there really is a casting. I haven't structured a way to identify its purpose. I really can manage these stairs on my own, you know."

"You'd not deny me the opportunity to admire your progress," he said, cheerfully. "Your ribs aren't bothering you at all?"

"Not a twinge," she said, more than pleased by the fact. "Nor has the headache reoccurred, even when I cast." But the climb up the single flight of stairs still brought on a faint dizziness. "I think I'm as recovered as I'm going to get," she added as Illidian, coming down from above, met them on the landing. "Not technically ill, but no physical reserve."