Valkwitch (The Valkwitch Saga Book 1) (25 page)

Halfway across the damn world for an empty
house.

She visited a bath house upon leaving the
under-city to wash away the dirt of the tunnels and cool off, literally and
otherwise. The cold baths were less crowded, which meant fewer eyes on the tall
Morg and her golden hair, a continuous curiosity for chatty local women.
Tyrissa was in too ill of a mood to explain once again that no, she couldn’t
tell you where she bought the dye because her hair was normally like this. She
was self-conscious enough in Khalanheim’s public baths without the
surreptitious staring and whispers.

Tyrissa sighed in disappointment when she tried
the knob to Liran’s home and found it unlocked. He expected her, but was too
trusting in their neighbors. However, any thought of scolding him was buried by
the assault of spices on the air that billowed out upon opening the door. Liran
was cooking. It almost smelled great.

“Ty?”

“Yeah,” she called back. Tyrissa made certain to
lock the door behind her before hanging her coat in the tiny alcove on the one
empty peg. Liran’s collection of merchant coats occupied the other five. Her
staff followed, propped into a corner.

“Liran, you realize that adding spices to your
cooking doesn’t make it good. Just flavored,” she said as she entered the
common area of their home. Liran stirred a small cauldron that was perched over
a fire in the hearth.

Liran smiled and said, “It’s nothing compared to our
mother’s, but I think I do well enough.”

Tyrissa leaned over the small cauldron and saw a
medley of vegetables floating in a thin brown broth. She doubted there would be
meat in it, but it was more than enough.

“Thank you for dinner, in any case.”

“My pleasure, sister.”

Liran poured two servings of the stew in two
wildly different bowls. One was thin, blue lacquered stoneware, the other
carved and treated wood with a broad rim. Tyrissa figured the primary rule of
Liran’s possessions was that nothing ever matched. Everything in his home, from
the dishware, to the furniture, to the curtains on narrow windows was an
imperfect product, or left-over stock, or something added in at the last minute
to sweeten a deal. The only consistency was the chaos of it all. And his
clothing, of course. That much was guild regulation.

“How goes your epic quest?” he asked as he sat
down at the table. The question was rather direct. They didn’t talk often about
her Pact. Tyrissa suspected Liran preferred to pretend she was still just his
little sister. She couldn’t blame him.

“Miserable. I come across a continent, get used
to living in this city, and have to tolerate and protect that wretched little
Felarill harpy, all while looking for this supposed Pact Witch.” Tyrissa
punctuated each step with a fierce jab into a large chunk of potato with her
fork. Liran stayed silent, not wanting to interrupt the tirade and share in the
potato’s fate.

“I wade through the filth of Under Forge,
probably ensured that one guy will never walk right again—”

Liran perked up, “What guy?”

“Some thug who thought me an innocent, lost girl
and turned out to be only half right. I finally find the house of this ‘witch’
and she’s not even there anymore!”

“She’s gone? That’s a shame.”

“Gone. The door was broken open and the house
torn up, clothes strewn across the bedroom as if someone left in a hurry. There
was some blood in another room.”

“It could have been a robbery,” Liran said.

Tyrissa shook her head, “No. It was turned up
like one, but there were obvious, valuable looking statues and trinkets on the
floor, weapons, stuff worth stealing. That reminds me…”

Tyrissa stood from the table and hurried to her
coat for the paper and knife she took from the house. She set both in the
center of the table, flattening the folded paper.

“Do you recognize this language?”

Liran scanned the paper and shook his head. “I
don’t, though you could probably have a scholar tell you, since it’s a current
language, if foreign. Nothing—”

“On this side of the Rift,” Tyrissa sighed into
her remaining stew, feeling as if the answers kept getting farther way,
dispersed across the whole world.

Liran pushed on the hilt of the dagger, spinning
it in a half circle, the blade and polished winged shield emblem catching the
room’s light.

“I thought it wasn’t a robbery, dear sister.”

Tyrissa returned a sheepish grimace and tapped
the symbol. “I had to. She’s connected with Tsellien,” her voice dropped to a
whisper, “Connected to me.” The dagger was proof enough of her suspicions that
grew with each new piece of information.

“So. What’s next? Your mystery is alive and well,
even if the home of your only real lead looked as if the riftwinds tore through
it.”

Winds.

The thief in the theater looked a lot like one of
Tsellien’s companions, the one with the map. Same fashion sense and size, at
least. And all he wanted was a single piece of jewelry. If the Thieves were
there solely to sow terror and take a little vengeance of the Talons, what else
could he have wanted? ‘
Your husband knows what I want
,’ he said. With
all the smoke and chaos of the moment, it was the voice that made Tyrissa so
sure it was the same man.

“Liran, what do you know about amber teardrop
necklaces?”

That provoked a quizzical raised eyebrow from her
brother but the intense stare Tyrissa gave him prevented any sly evasions or
jokes.

“They’re from the Hithian Crater. Desperate fools
have been throwing away their lives ferreting out treasures and relics from
that place. Most only find death in the form a wurm or some other domain-spawned
monster. Every once in a while, one of the fools stumbles back here clutching
some trinket or prize along with tales of
more
for anyone that’ll listen
to their recently enriched drunken rants.”

Liran raised and drained his bowl before
continuing.

“About a year ago a man came out of the ruins
with a small chest. Inside was a pile of old shattered glass and fifteen pieces
of jeweled amber in the shape of teardrops. They were exquisite and unique and worth
millions. Buyers from across the continent came into town and the resulting
bidding war was vicious. There were a handful of murders, including the poor
bastard who found them. Five or six were stolen and disappeared. The rest were
auctioned off, eventually.”

And that woman was wearing one as a necklace.
How fashionable.

“A couple have traded hands a few times since
then and no one knows for certain how many are floating around. Seems like a
few more have been found, but everyone is less enthusiastic about trading them.
Almost more trouble than they’re worth.”

“How can amber be worth so much?”

“They’re not normal amber. They had the
Concordium take a look at one. Said they were an unknown but inert kind of
elchemical material, either from a domain or an elemental plane.”

“So it would be profitable enough group of
thieves to steal one from the chest of a wealthy woman in the middle of a
play?” Tyrissa asked.

Liran chuckled, “I heard about that. Is that what
happened?”

“Yes. They had a taste for theatrics.”

“Why the sudden interest in high fashion?”

“One of the Thieves, the one who took the
necklace, looked like one of Tsellien’s companions from when they came through
Edgewatch.”

“I thought they all died in that temple?”

“I thought so too.” She remembered Tsellien
calling him over with the maps. Tyrissa had told them where to find their
deaths.

Vralin
.

The Cadre kept records on the Thieves, as well as
criminal bounties. As she worked through the rest of her stew, Tyrissa promised
herself to find time to look for anything on this Vralin before yet another
night out with the charming Miss Alvedo. It was all she had to go on, for now.

Tyrissa stood in the Cadre’s record room on the
second floor of the guild hall, surrounded by four centuries of history. Company
banners decorated the walls, though these were eight tattered and scarred originals
and not the reproductions that hung elsewhere in the building. Taken together
they showed the gradual progression of the Cadre’s emblem from bloodied spear
on a white field to the current abstracted geometric spear point on a disc of
red and white quadrants. Trophies of victories filled the vaulted room: banners
of defeated rivals, display cases of old weapons, and a quartet of griffon
skulls, their beaks just as sharp as when their owners were alive. Kadrich, in
portrait form, kept watch over the collection of the company’s history with the
stern gaze of commander and father.

Another painting covered much of the wall
opposite of Kadrich. It was an old map of the northern nations, centered on the
Khalan states before they joined into a federation. Once perhaps a practical piece
of art, the passage of time had rendered it an anachronistic relic. The varied
Khalan states were drawn with their independent borders, when there were a
dozen states instead of the modern seven, plus a patchwork of tiny city-states
and baronies. The top of the map still had the three old Morg kingdoms of
Kroya, Groddan, and Motengard. The Rift was nowhere to be seen and Hithia,
colored a faded blue, dominated the southern third of the painting. Vordeum,
however, was still in largely unclaimed ruins, its lands painted a faded red
over whatever once was.

Flanking the antique map were bookshelves filled
with archives, chronicles, and a copy of what she sought: a leather bound
folder, its cover embossed with ‘Active Bounties’. She brought it over to a
nearby table and began her search. The entries were organized by bounty value,
high to low and it didn’t take long for Tyrissa to find her man. He was the
third entry, after a serial killer with no name but an extensive resume and an
embezzler that skipped town with over a million gilders from Central’s coffers.

Bounty Notice: Vralin k’Zhan

Funding Party: Johan Guldres (Rift Trade
Company)

Value: 250,000 gilders for proof of death.
Live capture assumed to be unreasonable.

Description: Male Hithian, brown hair, brown
eyes. Height: Five feet, eleven inches. Lean build. See attached face sketch.

Crime: Wanted for the murder of five members
of a Rift Trade Company expedition and liable in the deaths of twelve others
due to abandonment contracted duties. Additionally, the subject stole an
undisclosed number of Hithian artifacts unearthed by the expedition.

Subject is an Air-aligned Pactbound. Engage
with extreme caution and advantage. Subject possesses considerable skill with
blades and thrown weapons and is aided by elemental magicks. Further, the
subject is a known associate of the remnants of the Thieves Guild. His last
confirmed sighting was during a capture operation in Under Moors on Silverspring
20th. The subject escaped but the artifacts were recovered.

Restricted Tier bounty approved by Central
Judiciary of Khalanheim.

First posted on the 13th of Pearlshade 257 AR.

Updated on the 25th of Silverspring 257 AR.

Tyrissa stared at the sketch in her hands. She
wasn’t mistaken. This was the same man that accompanied Tsellien through
Edgewatch, the one with the floating walk and the map. He was the lone survivor
of that ill-fated group and was here in Khalanheim. She didn’t want to think on
how he had escaped when everyone else who entered that temple died. Including
herself, by certain measures. With ‘Karine’ gone and her own Pact offering
nothing but the vaguest hints and teases, Tyrissa’s only lead to any sort of
answers was a highly wanted criminal. Perfect.

“Already looking for extra income?” It was Jesca.
She must have slipped in without her noticing.

“Hey Jesca. Nothing like that I’m just… looking
into something.”

Jesca came around to the other side of the table
and glanced at Vralin’s bounty sheet. Tyrissa tapped a finger on the
‘Restricted Tier bounty’ designation. “What does this mean?”

“Means the target is extra dangerous. Usually
reserved for Pactbound and Weapon Masters and the like and only published to
guilds like ours and professional hunters. It keeps us from finding a trail of
dead amateurs along the way.”

“Wouldn’t that make the mark easier to find?” She
found it hard to look away from the sketch. It was dead on, the rough lines and
fading from the re-printing process giving his face the proper haunting quality
of a man that should be dead.

“I said the same thing,” Jesca said.

“He was one of the Thieves at Southwest’s party,
Jesca. Snatched a necklace from Mrs. Guldres and leapt from the tables to the
walkways above us as if it were nothing.”

“Must be hard up for cash to be working with the
Thieves.”

“Or after something else,” Tyrissa muttered to
herself. It was more than a simple theft. It was a message to the man who’s
funding his bounty.
I can cut the gemstone from your wife’s neck in the
middle of a Prime’s guildhall. It would be easy enough to slide the knife a
little deeper next time.

“Seems that way,” Jesca said. “Some of our bands
on night watches have been attacked with similar elchemical tricks, only to
have the thieves escape without taking anything.”

“What were they guarding?”

Jesca shrugged. “Vaults. Storage facilities. The
kind of places where something valuable might be tucked away. It’s very strange
and has been happening here and there for months now. The papers have it
trumped up as a crime spree.”

Tyrissa made a mental note to look into those
attacks. If they’re related to the incident at the party, they could lead back
to Vralin.

She looked up from the sketch and saw that Jesca
was clothed in her sparring leathers, her bare arms showing fresh welts. Loose
strands of her hair clung to her face, and she smelled of sweat.

“Aren’t you a little underdressed?” The afternoon
would be fading away and they had another job scheduled with Alvedo tonight.
Otherwise Tyrissa would have been down in the yard instead of keeping herself
rested and halfway presentable.

Jesca gave her a wicked grin. “I’m not, but you
are. You’re going it alone tonight. Through a convergence of fate and business,
the wealthy and influential Cordrin van Braun’s cannot accompany his lovely
wife to the opening show of the theater season and Olivianna’s father offered
his daughter’s company as a replacement to fill the seat. Joyce was not
invited.”

“This sounds painful.”

“And there’s more! It’s at the Palace Theater
where only the most discriminating are seen in their finest. So you get to look
nice too. Caliss and I are going to make you
pretty.
” Jesca said it with
such relish that Tyrissa could only feel dread. She had been told it would be a
formal occasion but not to what degree.

“This day just got that much worse.”

“Oh, have an open mind. You might even like it.”

Olivianna Alvedo was unwell tonight.

She looked splendid, Tyrissa would grudgingly admit,
wearing a sleek silver dress in the high-necked Khalan style, the fabric
interwoven with threads that toyed with the light. Her hair hung in dark
ringlets and she wore a matching jet black gemstone on a thin steel chain
around her neck, the centerpiece held high and pressed to her throat. It all
framed a pensive face, eyes downcast to her lap where her hands clutched and
rolled the fabric of her dress, before smoothing it out and repeating. Her
bracelets clicked together at the end of each cycle, the only sound in the
narrow enclosed carriage beyond the roll of metal-bound wheels on the street
below.

No, Alvedo must be unwell because she failed to
make any of her customary snide comments towards Tyrissa. Jesca and Caliss had
done an admirable job of dressing her up to look the part of a noble
guardswoman. Her new, well-fitted guild coat was clean and pressed and her boots
were polished to a shine. When it came to her hair, Tyrissa insisted on a Morg
style, the braid encircling the top of her head like a laurel of gold, before
joining in the back. She relented on the white and red ribbons interlaced in
the braid, and allowed them to lacquer her fingernails a blood red. Rouge was
out of the question. In the end, they had deemed her properly dressed and a fine
walking advertisement for the Cadre.

And Olivianna didn’t even notice, saying barely a
word since they picked her up from the guest house. She simply took her seat
and stared at her hands, brow furrowed in worry for the entire ride. They were
almost at the Palace Theater and Tyrissa couldn’t take it anymore.

“No catty comment, Miss Alvedo? No talk of
futilely polishing a rock to make a gemstone?” That was weak, but would serve
as an introduction.

Olivianna looked up and seemed to see her for the
first time. “Oh,” she said. “You look very nice, Jorensen.”

Tyrissa replied with a stunned silence at her
words, even if that compliment still bore traces of a sneer.

Now I’m worried.
Before leaving the guild
hall, Tyrissa had taken a moment to find out just who Alvedo was replacing and
found that if Cordin van Braun was a focal point of Khalanheim’s financial
world, his wife Irenea was a focus in the equally complex social scenes. Alvedo
must be under the immense pressure of social frivolities. Tyrissa tried to
summon some sympathy, but that well was quite dry.

The carriage slowed to a halt. Tyrissa leaned
forward to the window. Ahead stood the Palace Theater, Khalanheim’s grandest
venue for the whims of the rich and powerful. Set back from the surrounding streets
by a broad lawn that was once a walled-in garden, the theater was an elegant
bastion of pointed turrets and intricately carved stone window frames, all bound
together by checkered bricks of black and red. Originally meant to be a second
palace for the Khalanheim monarchy, the construction hadn’t been completed
before the royal line was disposed by the trade guilds. Now, the heirs of those
merchant princes came here to be entertained atop a grave of the old ways.

They had stopped due to traffic, the curving road
that led to the theater’s main entryway clogged by the assembled coaches and
carriages of Khalanheim’s upper crust and their accompaniment of animals,
drivers, and guards. For every council member from a Prime or Major, there were
five or more hired hands, all seeing to different tasks in a flurry of
executing one grand entrance after another. Tyrissa heard their driver give a
sigh before urging their suddenly modest team of two horses to get in line. She
couldn’t help but smile to herself, knowing that Alvedo would be stewing in
meaningless embarrassment at their downright humble entrance.

Many attendees disembarked their carriages and
ascended the stairs at the front of the theater with a cluster of guards
shadowing them, bright displays of finery and wealth ringed by as much security
they could muster. Tyrissa saw many crests of the Talons and the Cadre in the
steady stream of wealthy theater-goers, never mind the less obvious personal
guards. A small army would be in attendance for this performance. There had
been another pair of high profile kidnappings in the last week, keeping the
wealthy paranoid and security services booked.

Tyrissa stepped out of their carriage as their
turn arrived, circling around to open the opposite door for her client and
scanning the organized chaos for potential threats. The air held a touch of
chill as the light of an autumn day died away to the west

When she exited the carriage, Olivianna had
donned her mask of convincing smiles and dark shining eyes, appearing every bit
happy to be here and oblivious to any inkling that she had anything less than
an equally grand entrance. Tyrissa fell in behind her as a second, leased
shadow, accessory and security. As they ascended the wide stairs to the
entrance, Olivianna nodded or gave faint waves to other attendees. Of the
pensive, silent girl in the carriage there was no sign. It was a skill Tyrissa
could only imagine, the effortless switching between personalities. Alvedo was
more like Zeris of Many Masks than she thought.

According to
A King Brought Low
, the
merchants disposed of the Khalan royal family out of frustration with their
extravagant spending and debts. As they crossed into the entry hall, Tyrissa
questioned that version of events. Lavish paintings of fanciful lakeside scenes
covered the walls, each with ornate, gilded frames. An array of crystalline
chandeliers and gilded lamps hung from the ceiling, their combined lights
sparkling in a constellation of excess. At either end of the hall, wide
carpeted stairways curved up to the second floor, split in half by brass
handrails that shone from polish.

Attendants split away from their employers as the
stream of theater-goers reached a line of ushers dressed in black coats
emblazoned with the crest of the Palace Theater, a wireframe outline of the
building’s façade.

“You name, madam?”

“Olivianna Alvedo.”

“Alvedo… Alvedo… ah,” he flipped over to a second
page, “You are a guest of Irenae van Braun. You’ve only one guard tonight?”

The brief tightening of her eyes spoke volumes.
This man had not the time to be impressed or otherwise with Olivianna. Tyrissa
kept a straight face. The night was going
well.

“Yes.”

He motioned to a clearly overworked usher and
said, “Box Two.”

As they crossed the lavish foyer, Tyrissa caught
sight of promotional posters for tonight show. ‘A long term winter engagement,’
they said, ‘The Master Bard from the Evelands: Giroon the Great.’ Tyrissa
recognized the name from the introduction to
Tales from Across the North
,
and had seen it mentioned here and there since.