Bookworm III (17 page)

We must have been asleep
, she thought, numbly. Even after everything that had happened to her, she still found it hard to believe that Deferens had managed to take over so quickly. In hindsight, it was an obvious weakness ... but she knew that there were people who lived next to volcanoes, always believing there wouldn’t be an eruption during their lifetimes. And sometimes they were right ... and sometimes they weren’t so lucky.

She looked up at the guard. “And where are you from?”

“Kurii,” Talbot said.

It meant nothing to Elaine. “How did you get here?”

“We were in our barracks, then we were in the warehouse,” Talbot said. “Then we were here.”

Elaine frowned. Talbot couldn’t lie to her, but he wouldn’t volunteer information and, if she didn’t ask the right questions, he might not understand what she meant. Maybe Deferens had outsmarted himself after all; the spell would have eventually overcome Elaine herself, but he would have had to ask careful questions to get what he wanted out of the affair. Unless he’d been planning to remove the spell himself, at some later date ...

But Talbot’s description suggested that they had been transfigured, then transported to the Golden City.

She shook her head. “How many of you are there?”

“Forty thousand,” Talbot said.

Elaine blanched. Forty thousand soldiers – and the Inquisitors – would be enough to keep the Golden City under control. But it seemed too many to be real. Forty thousand newcomers to the Golden City? The city council had been having enough trouble finding living space for the Court Wizards and their hangers on ... and there were only a few hundred of them. Forty thousand newcomers would be impossible to house.

She cleared her throat. “How many soldiers are in the Golden City?”

“Three thousand,” Talbot said.

That
sounded more reasonable, Elaine decided. She bounced a handful of other questions off him, but Talbot simply didn’t know very much. He’d been a farmhand who had seen the advantages in becoming a soldier, done well in his basic training and then been assigned to a barracks along the edge of the wildlands. And then there had been a request for some volunteers ... and then, the next thing he recalled was being in the warehouse. One of the big shipping warehouses on the edge of the city, Elaine guessed. They were used to house goods brought in and out of the city. Given enough time, someone could probably house an army there without being detected, at least until it was too late.

They were building up stockpiles of food for the Conference
, she told herself, grimly. She’d attended the Privy Council meeting – her
last
council meeting – when they’d agreed to spend extra monies on procuring food for the Court Wizards.
All they had to do was transfigure the soldiers into something harmless and bring them in with the wagons, then store the poor bastards in the warehouse until the time came to return them to normal
.

“Talbot,” she said, “what orders do your people have for the city?”

“I don’t know,” Talbot said.

Elaine glared at him. “Why not?”

“I am only told what I need to know,” Talbot said, in a monotone. “What I do not need to know, I do not know.”

“Because you might be forced to talk,” Elaine muttered. “What do you normally do when you occupy a city?”

“The old sweats say we patrol streets, keep the population respectful and hit anyone who even looks at us funny,” Talbot informed her. “The women are to be ravished so they learn their place, while their menfolk are to be broken. What we want, we take.”

Elaine felt sick. How could Deferens have brought such monsters into the Golden City? She knew there were truly evil people out there – Hawthorne had planned to take her and make her his wife – but this was different. She thought of the people she knew being chased by such monsters and shivered in horror. This was ... this was awful.

She changed the subject, quickly. “Do you know what the passwords are to enter or leave this building?”

“No,” Talbot said. “I have orders not to leave my guardpost until I am relieved.”

Elaine cursed herself under her breath. She hadn’t thought about that, even though she should have realised that Talbot wouldn’t be expected to stay there all night. What time was it, anyway? They’d taken her clockwork watch along with her wand and everything else she’d been carrying at the time. She thought it was late at night, but she honestly wasn’t sure. It felt like hours since she’d thrown caution to the winds and attacked the curse with everything she had.

“I see,” she said. “And when will you be relieved?”

“I don’t know,” Talbot said.

He didn’t have a watch or any other way to tell the time, Elaine noted. She briefly considered trying to swap clothes with him, but the thought of anyone being fooled if she wore the red uniform was ludicrous. The other option was to take him with her, yet she knew it would be dangerous. Anyone could shout ‘STOP’ and Talbot would obey. The state he was in, he would do anything for anyone. It crossed her mind that she should kill him, or order him to kill himself, but she couldn’t bring herself to take that step. The mere thought was horrific.

“Do you know,” she asked, “where they put my wand?”

“No,” Talbot said.

Elaine sighed, then ordered him to turn out his pockets and drop everything he was carrying on the floor, while she washed her face in cold water. His pockets were largely empty, save for a dagger, which she took, and a pendant that – she suspected, was designed to allow him to pass through some of the palace’s wards. She pocketed the pendant, making a mental note to study it later, then looked up at Talbot. The guard’s eyes looked back at her, glassily. She shuddered. Deferens would probably have been happy to leave her in a similar state indefinitely.

A thought struck her and she leant forward. “Are there any other prisoners here?”

“Children,” Talbot said. “The Emperor’s servants said they were to be treated with respect.”

Elaine blinked.
Children
? As far as she knew, Deferens was unmarried; she’d assumed he was hoping for a marriage into one of the Great Houses, linking his status as a Privy Councillor with the wealth and magical heritage of the aristocracy. It was possible – even probable – that he had a run of bastards, but would he bring them to the Golden City? There were Great Houses that wouldn’t give a damn, yet it was odd. He’d want his heir, assuming he had one, kept well away from anything that could blow up in his face.

“Children,” she mused. “Whose children?”

“I don’t know,” Talbot said.

Elaine sighed. “Did you see them do anything that might show who they were?”

“One of them hexed me,” Talbot said. “He cast a spell on me.”

“I understand the impulse,” Elaine said. A magical child ... he had to be from one of the Great Houses. And that meant ... what? Hostages? Or something worse? There were quite a number of spells that could be worked with the blood of innocent children. “But there’s no time to worry about it now.”

She took a breath. “Here are your orders. You are to carry them out as soon as I leave the room. You will use wet cloth to block up your ears, then hold yourself in readiness. Once someone comes into the room, you will ... you will knock them out, then make a break for it and run as far as you can.”

She felt a twinge of guilt as Talbot nodded in understanding, then violently pushed it to one side. He might be an automaton now, but he would have gleefully raped and looted his way through the city if Deferens had given the word. And his comrades might do the same, if they managed to tighten their grip on power.

Gritting her teeth, she glanced out of the room, checked that the passageway was empty and then closed the door firmly behind her. And then she started to run.

Chapter Fourteen

In Johan’s experience, the Great Library had always been crammed with students. There wasn’t an hour of the day when there weren’t at least fifty students and older researchers making their way through the library, studying books in between snatching catnaps at their desks. He knew that Elaine hadn’t really minded, as long as they didn’t drool on the books. She’d been a student herself, only a few short years ago.

But now the building was dark, and as silent as the grave. The librarians were gone, hastened out to their staff accommodation or wherever they lived in the city, while the handful of guest visitors had been ordered to stay elsewhere. Lights that should have been burning indefinitely, powered by the wards, were no longer lit, leaving the entire building shrouded in darkness. Even Cass’s light spells couldn’t push the darkness back more than a few metres, as if it were a physical thing. Johan couldn’t help seeing
things
in the darkness, right at the corner of his eye. He wasn’t sure if they were real or just tricks of the light.

“The Golden City has always been restricted in its growth,” Cass commented, as they made their way down a long book-lined corridor. Titles glimmered at them and then faded into the darkness. “The mountains saw to that, really.”

“Everyone knows that,” Daria pointed out. She sounded unhappy to be in the darkness, even though she could probably see better than either of the two humans. Werewolf eyes were sharper too. “The Emperors didn’t want too many people infesting their city.”

“And so they placed their capital within the heart of a mountain range,” Cass said. “But they rapidly found themselves running out of space. There was just no room to expand.”

“I know all that,” Johan said, tartly. “My father certainly bitched about it often enough.”

Cass turned and half-smiled at him. “And did your father ever grumble about why he wasn’t allowed to dig underground?”

Johan frowned. “I don’t recall him saying anything of the sort,” he said, finally. “But he might not have wanted to grumble like that in front of me.”

“There are passages below the city,” Daria said, suddenly. “And people aren’t allowed to burrow underground because they might stumble across those passageways.”

“You used them,” Cass said. She sounded irked that Daria had known her secret, although Johan wasn’t too surprised. Even he had heard rumours of a secret tunnel network linking the important buildings together. “I had forgotten.”

There was a hint of a chuckle from Daria. “But I thought all of those tunnels would be ... protected and guarded,” she said. “The Great Houses wouldn’t want just
anyone
sneaking into their homes.”

“They wouldn’t,” Cass agreed. “But there are some passageways that are known only to the Inquisitors and certain members of the Privy Council. One of them leads from the Great Library to the Imperial Palace.”

Daria turned to look at Johan. “Did Elaine ever mention a secret passageway to you?”

“The building is riddled with secret passageways,” Johan said. Whoever had designed the Great Library had rapidly run out of space, so he’d used magic to extend the space he had until the building was far larger on the inside than the outside. “But I didn’t know there was one leading to the Imperial Palace.”

“She might not have mentioned it to you,” Cass said. “Knowledge like that is rarely passed on unless there is a pressing need for it.”

“Which is why many of those passageways have been forgotten,” Daria commented, snidely. “How many are rediscovered every year?”

“Kids sometimes find entrances and go exploring,” Cass said, curtly. “Some of them never return.”

She led the way through a door into a large chamber, then paused for a moment. It took Johan several seconds to realise that they’d entered one of the reading rooms, if only because it looked so different in the darkness. The desks, normally occupied by students, were cold and empty, while the bookshelves on the walls looked untouched. Something
moved
high above him, but when he looked up he saw nothing but shadows. He kept a wary eye on the darkness as Cass moved forward, then opened a door leading into a private reading room. It was large enough to house a dozen students without serious problems.

“There’s nothing here,” he said, puzzled. Elaine had let him explore the library, once she’d explained to the staff that he was a guest. “Why are we coming here?”

“There’s an inner room here,” Cass said, pressing her hand against the far wall. It opened with an audible click, revealing a second smaller compartment. “I believe it was originally intended for the Emperor, then the Grand Sorcerers.”

Daria bit off a laugh. “The Grand Sorceress came to the Great Library to study?”

“She doesn’t know everything,” Cass said. “If she’s still alive.”

Johan shivered. The Grand Sorceress was the most powerful magician in the world, as far as anyone knew. If she’d been killed, or captured, it suggested that the Emperor was more powerful than her by far. Johan wasn’t quite sure of the limits of his own power, but he knew his weaknesses. A traditional duel was out of the question. He felt for Elaine’s presence in his mind, seeking reassurance, but only felt the faintest of shimmers in return. It didn’t feel good.

He forced himself to look around the hidden compartment instead, fighting down his fears for his mistress. The room was smaller than he’d expected, but luxurious beyond belief. Each of the walls were covered in gilt-edged bookshelves – a handful of texts sat on the shelves – while the table was made of the finest wood and the chair was sinfully comfortable. A large cabinet sat in the far corner, surrounded by a handful of preservation runes. Johan guessed that the rules against eating and drinking in the Great Library didn’t apply to the Grand Sorceress and her predecessors. He wouldn’t have cared to be the library attendant who tried to explain the rules to Lady Light Spinner. Anyone who tried was likely to wind up as a frog for a few hours.

“She was looking at ancient history books,” Daria said, with some surprise. She had walked over to look at the bookshelves. “Was there a reason for that?”

“We have an enemy,” Cass said. She drew her wand and started to poke and prod at the walls. “One who comes to us out of the shadows of the past.”

“How very dramatic,” Daria sneered.