The Tainted City (44 page)

Marten raked his hands up through his hair. “I wish you’d asked my help earlier. Ensuring her safety now will be challenging, at a time we can least afford distraction. Sechaveh sent us word: Ruslan believes the killer’s aim is to destroy the confluence, in a conflagration that will kill every mage in this city, leave the untalented waterless—and destroy Alathia’s wards beyond hope of rebuilding, for that matter. Ruslan thinks we have only scant days remaining to prevent disaster.”

My mouth fell open. “Shit. Do you believe him?”

“In this, yes,” Marten said. “Neither Sechaveh nor Ruslan would have revealed such weakness to foreigners if they didn’t believe the situation dire.”

Dire. No kidding. When this news spread, the city would dissolve into chaos, merchant houses fighting each other for the water and supplies needed to flee.

Unless the news didn’t spread. “Sechaveh’s not going to tell anyone, is he?”

“No,” Marten said. “He warned that if any one of us spreads the word, he’ll revoke our sanction and kill us all. He says, ‘The best course is to find and stop the city’s enemy, not make futile attempts to mitigate failure.’”

Fuck. It wouldn’t keep me from trying to warn my friends, even if I had to be circumspect about the reason. But if time was so short, Marten wouldn’t want to bother with any spellcasting that didn’t help him catch the killer.

“So you won’t help Melly, then.” Especially not when I’d already given them another lead to chase, in the form of Pello. I’d have to pray I could get that magic-blocking charm from Avakra-dan. If Kiran came through with the blood-mark, then I’d need it for him, once I told him the truth. If he didn’t, it’d be my last hope for Melly.

“I didn’t say that.” Marten looked wearier than ever. “But…”

Stevan looked up from the painbender charm. “Of course we will,” he snapped. “Or does your sympathy only extend to blood mages and not their victims, Marten? You talk of protection for a murderer like Kiran, knowing it will take a miracle to devise it. The child is far more deserving of my effort.”

“Stevan’s right,” I said, though the words near choked me. “Melly needs it more.”

“Very well,” Marten said heavily. “Stevan, if you will—”

The ground shook and sent us all staggering. Pale dust sifted down from the ceiling, accompanied by an ominous grinding. I lunged for the doorway. Silver limned the alley walls. High above, red and violet wardfire flickered across the stars.

Abrupt pain twisted in my chest, like a hook setting deep, and the world went black.

Hands were on me, my skin prickling with a warning of magic—I fought, frantic to get clear.

“Dev, hold! It’s only us.” Marten spoke in my ear. I was lying on unmoving stone. The walls were dark again, the night sky above clear of lightning. Marten was gripping my shoulders, and Stevan’s hand pressed on the bare skin of my chest where my shirt had been pulled open.

“What the fuck?” I tried to push Stevan’s hand away. I might as well have tried to move a stone pillar.

“You’re right, he’s been bound,” Stevan said to Marten. “I don’t recognize the type of magic, and I can’t discern its caster. Yet I doubt the timing with the quake is coincidence. I think it the killer’s work.”

Marten asked me, “Did anyone tonight take a sample of your blood? Pello, or even Kiran?”

“What? No! I mean, I left a trace on a wall when Pello snatched me, but—what the hell do you mean, bound? The killer can force me to obey him, like Ruslan with Kiran?”

“Impossible to say for certain, not without detailed study.” Stevan spoke with clinical dispassion. Another prickling of magic chased over my skin. “The link is strange…almost, it reminds me of the blood vow Ruslan made Sechaveh. It ties to your body, not your will, and appears to terminate in the confluence.”

“The confluence that’s about to burn out in some magical explosion?” I demanded. “Tell me you can break this…link, binding, whatever the fuck it is!”

A tinge of his usual contempt crept into Stevan’s voice. “Did I not say the magic is unknown to me? It’s highly dangerous to try and break a binding without understanding it first. But a binding so strong can’t be cast without either willing participation of the subject, or blood to key the spell, and a trace amount wouldn’t be enough. If you want the binding broken, be honest: who in this city holds your blood?”

“Oh, hell.” I struggled upright. “Avakra-dan.”

Chapter Eighteen

(Dev)

A
vakra-dan’s alley was as dark and silent as the depths of a crevasse. “A little help?” I asked Marten and Stevan. “Pello took my glowlight charm.” I sure didn’t want to risk touching the wrong spot on her warded door in the darkness.

I’d reluctantly explained my bargain with her to Marten and Stevan while we fought our way through shouting, frightened crowds in Acaltar’s streets. Marten had listened in silence, but Stevan made enough acid comments about my idiocy and deceitfulness for both of them.

Marten’s rings glowed softly silver, enough for me to see the copper plate amidst the grime on Avakra-dan’s door. I scratched gently and stood back. Nothing.

“I say we break the wards, Marten.” Stevan’s face was all hard angles and shadows.

“Just be ready for trouble,” I said. “Avakra-dan’s untalented, but still. If anyone can fight a mage, it’s her.”

Marten flashed a grin at Stevan. “See what fun you’ve been missing, cooped up in the Arcanum? Come, then. Under my lead…” He and Stevan stood shoulder to shoulder before the door, their hands hovering over the surface. Marten started a low, sonorous chant. Ward lines burst to life beneath the dirt, glowing a lurid purple.

Stevan joined Marten, at first in perfect unison. Then his rich baritone diverged, sliding over and under Marten’s voice in a pattern that diverged further with each repetition. The wards flared brighter, until I had to shield my eyes. A final searing flash made me hiss and duck, even as the wards went dark.

Marten and Stevan fell silent. They exchanged a swift, grim glance.

“You sense it?” Marten asked. Stevan nodded.

“Sense what?” I asked.

“Death,” Marten said, and opened the door.

The light of his rings illuminated three eyeless, mutilated bodies dangling upside down from the ceiling. Their feet were impaled on hooks meant to hold charm amulets, their mouths gaping in lipless screams. Blood still dripped from their wounds to pool deep on the floor.

I choked and put my arm over my nose. No matter how many times I saw the killer’s handiwork, I couldn’t help but feel sick to the core. Marten and Stevan slid into the room, their rings glowing and their eyes intent. I jerked my gaze from the corpses, half fearing to see the killer lurking in some shadowed corner. If these deaths happened during the quake, he’d been here not a half hour ago.

The charms on the walls had all melted and fused into lumpy, gleaming runnels of metal that coated the stone like an icefall. On the bloodstained, blackened desk sat two copper strongboxes, their lids open wide, their wards shattered. One still held a minor fortune in coin and gems. The other was empty but for a few scraps of paper.

Didn’t take a scholar to realize the empty strongbox had held her blood-marks. I grimaced, thinking of mine in the hands of the killer. Best case, he’d used up all my blood in casting the mystery binding. Worst case…what other spells might he cast on me?

That wasn’t all I had to fear. From the looks of this, I’d lost all chance of finding a charm strong enough to protect Melly. Then again…I peered at the corpses. Two men and a woman, their ruined features obscured by gore, their bloodsoaked clothes coarsely woven and lacking in sigils. Yet the woman was too lean of build to be Avakra-dan.

“Avakra-dan’s not here,” I said. “But she’d never have left her den with clients inside it. She had to have been here when the killer came. Maybe he took her somewhere, along with her blood-marks.” I pointed at the empty strongbox. “But if he’s the one who cast the binding on me…why? And how the hell did he know my blood was here?” Bren’s voice came whispering in my head.
Seems one of your foreign friends doesn’t like you much…

Stevan circled the corpses to examine the back wall. The stone there was adorned by tattered, reddened hangings instead of melted charms. “Look.” He pulled aside a hanging to reveal a second door, scribed with both concealment and protective wards. “These wards are undamaged but inactive. Someone released them, and not long ago.”

Marten opened the door and disappeared into the dark passageway beyond. He soon returned. “This leads to another alley. I saw no other bodies, and sensed no traces.”

“Either she left with the killer…or perhaps she escaped him.” Stevan heaved Avakra-dan’s worktable aside, grimacing as his feet skidded in blood. Revealed on the floor were a series of copper rings set with clouded emeralds. The innermost ring’s gems had splintered to shards, dark streaks radiating outward from the holes where they’d been. “Power was stored here, quite a lot of it, but none remains now. Released from its reservoir without control, the raw magic would have reacted against the magic stored within her charms and destroyed them in quite spectacular fashion.” He waved a hand at the slagged metal on the walls.

“So you think she breached the reservoir as a distraction, and ran.” That sounded like Avakra-dan, all right. I prayed she’d made it. Aside from any information she could give on the killer, or even my damn binding, I had to know if she’d found the charm I needed.

“Perhaps a more thorough examination of that alley is in order.” Marten moved for the back door again, beckoning Stevan to follow.

“Wait.” An old memory teased at me. Tavian’s office had held an escape route much like this one. You never knew when lionclaw addicts would get violent, and some of his clients had been highsiders, with access to seriously nasty charms. Yet Jylla had once told me his setup held a dual purpose. “Do you sense any active hide-me wards remaining in the room?”

Marten frowned. “Hmm. It’s a touch difficult to untangle traces with the confluence still so unsettled, but…” He paced along the back wall, past more shredded hangings. “Something here, quite subtle.” He knelt and passed his hand over one of the broad stone blocks at the wall’s base, humming.

The block shimmered. Hinges appeared, and a tracery of ward lines.

Ha. She did have a bolthole. Set off a nice big distraction, open the escape route as a decoy, then duck into the bolthole, leaving your enemy to chase down the wrong direction—classic.

“Someone’s inside.” Marten laid his palm flat on the false block. “Come out. Now. Or I will cast against you, and that paltry defensive charm I sense will not stop me.”

Hinges creaked. Avakra-dan slithered out of the dark, cramped space behind the block, a heart-rot charm clutched in one hand. Her coarse mop of hair was singed half away, the skin of her face and arms a patchwork of raw, oozing burns and dried blood.

“So kind of you to ask nicely.” Her black eyes settled on me, bright with anger. “Clever boy, to guess my bolthole. A bit too clever, yes? Shame about your blood-mark.”

Did she mean something more than the binding the killer had already cast? I burned to demand answers, but I’d be a fool to show her how badly I wanted them. I’d make sure Marten and Stevan squeezed every last drop of information from her. But Alathian truth spells could be dodged, as Jylla had demonstated so well. Better to offer incentive first.

“Bigger shame your business got destroyed, isn’t it? We’re hunting the viper responsible. Tell us what happened here, and you’ll have the chance for some revenge. But don’t think to bargain. Either you speak, or my employers will cast.” I tilted my head toward Marten and Stevan.

“No need for casting.” Avakra-dan spread her hands palm-up, though she didn’t drop the heart-rot charm. “I’ll gladly speak if it hurts that
adesh-toi
demonspawn. I was the middle of negotiating a deal with Jevis, here”—she grimaced at the mutilated woman—“and her guardsmen, when the air shimmers, and
kaz!
The demonspawn is standing there. One after the other, Jevis and her men are screaming and bleeding like slaughtered pigs, and the ground’s shaking like it’ll split open. I didn’t wait. I sparked my failsafe—better a fortune lost than my life. Khalmet’s hand, you’ve never seen such fireworks. A thousand charms burning out, molten metal raining down…”

She heaved a bitter sigh, surveying the mess on her walls. I could practically see her tallying the lost coin. “The bastard didn’t like it much, I tell you. He may have a demon’s power, but he curses like any man. By the time the charms’ magic faded, I’d set my decoy and was tight in my bolthole, praying to Khalmet the quake wouldn’t crush me. I’ve a peephole in there. Not a great view, but enough. The demonspawn didn’t even try chasing after me. He just ripped out my strongboxes, shattered their wards, and grabbed my contracts. He took a flask from his robe, poured something red all over them—blood, it looked like, though I’ve no idea why he’d carry extra, when he was already wading in it. He spat and said, ‘All those who feed on the innocent will burn.’ The blood-marks flared up in blue flames like wardfire, and the contracts burned away, didn’t even leave ash behind.”

If Khalmet was kind, maybe that meant I didn’t have to fear further spellcasting…but I knew better than to count on it. Marten and Stevan both wore deep, thoughtful frowns.

Avakra-dan continued. “After that, the room went black and the ground stilled. I couldn’t see a cursed thing, so I waited, in case the demonspawn remained. Just when I’d scrounged up the guts to crawl out, my door wards flared. I stayed put, and you broke in.”

“You call him demonspawn,” Marten said. “What did he look like?”

Avakra-dan shrugged. “Male, around your height, not heavy, amber eyes…hard to say more. He wore a Kaithan tribesman’s
gabeshal
robe, near every inch of skin was covered. I’ve no idea of his ancestry or age. I did spot metal on the back of his left hand, extending up into his sleeve. The metal was set with an opal and filigreed like some kind of charm, but it looked dark like iron, and iron can’t hold power.”

“Interesting.” Marten drew Stevan and me aside, and said softly, “Dev, perhaps your binding isn’t intended as a strike against us directly, but happened as a mere side-effect of our enemy’s apparent crusade against Ninavel. He may hate ganglords as much as he does mages. If he binds the clients of dealers in deadly charms to the confluence, in similar manner to the vows that bind Ninavel’s mages…”