Dangerous Gifts (21 page)

“And who would have watched Enthemmerlee’s?”

“You could have found another bodyguard.”

“She wanted
you
. And so did I.”

“Damn you to hells, Fain.
All
of them. So what will you do when you get back, since you’re so concerned to protect him as an ‘asset to Scalentine’?”

“I’ll be honest with you,” he said. I snarled, but he ignored me. “I don’t know if I can protect him, but I do know I can try. And I can do things, or arrange for things to be done, that members of the Militia can’t. You remember our conversation about Bergast? Before we left Scalentine?”

“No.”

“I told you he wouldn’t have been my first choice; though his qualifications are extremely good, he lacks experience. But our major specialist in defensive magics is currently assigned to Chief Bitternut.”

“You... But magic strong enough to kill isn’t usable on Scalentine.”

“I considered it a reasonable precaution to take.” Which gave me serious pause. Firstly it meant that Fain was taking the threat to Bitternut really seriously. Secondly, it meant that Fain, a man high up enough in the Diplomatic Section to know a deal more about how Scalentine worked than I did, thought that assassination by magic might, under the right circumstances, be possible, even there.

“So Bergast is your second best?” I didn’t even know why I was asking, except that it gave me something to say while I tried to cope with the idea that Hargur – whose job, the All knows, was dangerous enough anyway – was now, possibly, the target of some nutter who wanted all weres, especially influential ones, dead.

“No,” Fain said. “Another of our magicians was assigned to another non-human in a vulnerable position, in case weres were not the only ones in danger. Personally, I was not sure this was necessary, but I was overruled. And another was supposed to be returning from a mission, but her ship was delayed. So, it ended with Bergast.”

Right now I didn’t give much of a fart about Bergast. “A day and a night before a message will reach Laney,” I said. “Another day and a night before she can get here.
If
there are ships going in the right direction. How much would it cost to hire a ship, just to carry a message? Is it even possible?”

“Not, perhaps, so long as that,” he said.

“What do you mean? You were the one that said it.”

“Yes, assuming you go by civilian means. However, there is an alternative. Considering the urgency of the situation.”

I had no idea what he was talking about. I was trying not to let the churning panic in my stomach overwhelm me. I’d never felt this kind of fear in battle. I didn’t think I’d
ever
felt this particular kind of fear. Except perhaps once, long ago, for a sweet-eyed gentle boy who’d been burned alive in front of me.

Don’t think of that.

“Here.” He held something in his hand. It was only a few inches across, and put me in mind of those armatures that sculptors use before they add the clay; a structure of wires that indicates a shape to come, set into a base covered in tiny cogs and dials no bigger than my thumbnail.

“What is it?” I said.

“It’s a device for speaking between planes.”

“Oh. That’s what you were using in the cabin.”

“Yes. It is fortunate that I had a chance to pick this up, at least, before my need to follow Enthemmerlee became overwhelming.”

“Why didn’t you ask for someone to be sent, then, to take off the oath?” I said.

“There are no Fey employed in the Section. They do not seem to find it conducive. Getting someone to find and persuade another Fey to come here would take days, and would risk exposing the situation.”

“So you can send a message to Laney.”

“Yes. Well, I can send a message to someone who has the other part of this device, and they can contact her by more standard means.”

My brain hurt. “But if you could do this, why is it so vital for you to be in Scalentine? Surely you can tell people what to do from here?”

“My job consists of rather more than ‘telling people what to do,’ Madam Steel,” he said, a little crisply. “And there are other factors. But for our purposes, this should be perfectly adequate.”

“Show me,” I said.

Using the device, or rather watching Fain use it, was an exercise in frustration. It had to be fidgeted and fadgeted with, twisting the dials the merest fraction this way and that way, edging a tiny handle down the smallest bit with a fingernail, and so on and so forth, until finally there was a kind of tingling crackle and a shiver of blue-purple light ran along one of the wires.

I got excited for a moment, but that wasn’t it, either. After what felt like a decade or so of more fidgeting, there was another crackle, and one of the spaces between the wires seemed to catch hold of the blue-purple light and hold it in a wavering, shuddery shape that did funny things to my eyes.

Fain said, “Don’t look directly at it.”

“All right.” I was quite glad to look at the wall instead, that wavering light made me queasy. Fain muttered a string of choppy syllables, and the light was suddenly, furiously bright, flinging our shadows stark on the wall, showing every crack and ripple in the ancient plaster.

Fain said;
“A swift rabbit isn’t a hare but still leaps the moon.”

“...the moon under water snares the unwary fox...”

Every hair on the back of my neck stood up straight as a soldier on parade. It was an ordinary voice, though faint and wavering in and out – the Scalentine accent was plain, I could even place it to within a few streets of King of Stone – but going through that device
did
something to it. It carried an uncanny freight, of all the distance it had been through; it had passed through realms of things that knew neither air nor light nor warmth, but lived. And they had heard it as it passed.

I was still staring at our shadows on the wall, thinking they looked too dark, too solid, but Fain was speaking, calm and clear. “A message to Laney at the Red Lantern in Goldencat Street. Babylon, speak, they’ll pass it on.”

I cleared my throat, which had locked cold. “Tell her... tell her the Mehrin brothers will have to wait. I need her here. And Enthemmerlee needs advice on her wardrobe.”

Fain’s eyebrows almost took off from the top of his head at that, but he said, “Did you get all that?”

The voice read the message back. The sound of my own words was somehow loathsome; I just wanted the voice to
stop talking.

“Thank you,” Fain said. “Is there any news from the Militia?”

No, it couldn’t stop talking yet. I leaned close, looking away from that bruising light, not wanting to get near the thing, but desperate to hear.

“...all as before. Chief Bitternut” – my hands clenched – “arrested several of the Builders... bail was paid.”

“Very well. Thank you.” Fain flicked something on the base of the device. The light disappeared. The room sprang back into a much more comforting gloom, and Fain said, in an oddly tight voice, “Would you please let go?”

I hadn’t even realised; I was gripping his shoulder so hard that my fingers creaked as I released him. “I’m sorry.”

“I’m sure I’ll be able to use it again eventually,” he said, rotating the joint. He looked up at me. “I hope you are feeling reassured?”

“No.”

“No, you’re not, are you?” He looked at me keenly.

“What do you expect?” I said. “I’m not going to be reassured until whoever’s killing weres is safely caught, until I can get home and see with my own eyes that Bitternut’s all right.”

“Is that all?”

“If you want to know the truth, no. That device of yours... It’s...”

“It’s what?”

“Where did it come from?”

“Does that matter? It’s what, Babylon?”

“It’s making me think I’ll stick to messengers in future. There’s something
wrong
about it.”

“You’re not the first to say so. But one would be foolish not to use such a useful tool, would one not?”

“Tools can turn in the hand, Mr Fain.”

“True. Which is why one uses them with due caution. And for this, twice in such a short time is more than enough.”

“Why?”

“One does feel somewhat fatigued afterwards.”

I looked at it, a tight little bundle of dials and levers and a bare sketch of wires. It didn’t look dangerous. But then, neither does poison, most of the time.

Neither does a competent assassin.

CHAPTER

TWELVE

I
SHOULD HAVE
gone to bed, Rikkinnet had the duty, but I was too unsettled and miserable even to try and sleep. I took a lantern and started to explore the house. I told myself I was checking for risks I might have missed, but really, I was just trying to distract myself.

Too many silent corridors, too many empty rooms. Dust motes dancing in my lantern’s light. Hargur’s lean face, the angle of his smile, the feel of his chest beneath my hand, his heart beating warm and strong.

Fain, that perennial chessmaster, was worried enough about Hargur to keep his best magical defender at his back, instead of bringing them to Incandress.

Or, at least, the best one he trusted. For a moment I almost felt sorry for Fain, surrounded as he was by those he couldn’t trust; but then I cursed his name again. If it wasn’t for him, I’d be there, with Hargur. No wonder my gut hadn’t wanted me to leave.

My gut didn’t like the device either. But if it could get a message to Hargur... What message, though? He already knew he was under threat, he already knew weres were being targeted.

There was really only one message I wanted to send him; and I doubted Fain would let me use the wretched device for it.

I love you. Stay alive, for the All’s sake, until I can get home and tell you that.

I rubbed tears from my eyes and went outside to scout the yard; cursing whoever had decided that bushes and statuary were a good thing to have near the house, but glad to be out of all that emptiness, I worked my way around to the servants’ quarters.

Voices, laughter, an arrhythmic thudding that might be dancing. Above, a few windows sent out gleams here and there under the low eaves; below, around the kitchens, every window was aglow, shutters thrown open, yellow light gleaming in the puddles like melted butter.

I poked my head in at the side door, to see a mass of bodies; it seemed as though every Ikinchli servant in the place, which was going on for forty of them, not counting those in the guard, were crammed into the kitchens and spilling into the hall, gabbling, drinking, dancing. Some were smoking long-handled, elaborately carved pipes, filling the air with a sweetish fug. Someone was playing an instrument, or at least I thought it was an instrument; it sounded to me like someone intermittently strangling a pig with a silver wire.

“
Itnunnacklish!
” someone yelled, high and exulting. “
Itnunnacklish!
”

Others took it up. “
Itnunnacklish!
” “
Itnunnacklish!
” “
Itnunnacklish!
” Pipes and mugs were waved in the air.

One of them noticed me, and waved his pipe. His third eyelids were half-up, which meant he was either sick or so dosed on something he was about to fall over. “Join our worship,” he said.

“Worship, right. Thanks, but... I was just...”

“She doesn’t want to join our worship,” someone else said, and went off into a stream of Ikinchli.

A few more people had noticed my presence, and had stopped to look at me. They didn’t look unfriendly, exactly; just watchful. The more sober of them, anyway.

Another, sitting on a low table, leaned in, the lower halves of his eyes also sheened with the pearl-coloured inner eyelid. “Don’t have to believe in the Itnunnacklish,” he said. “Don’t have to believe in anything. Drink. Smoke. Tomorrow, everything be like it was, is just another party, okay?
Good
party.”

“Is
everyone
here? How many of you are there?”

But he just belched and slid off the table in a heap, sending a handful of metal tankards clanging to the floor, to laughter and shouts.

If any of the servants weren’t feeling like celebrating the arrival of the Itnunnacklish, it was impossible to tell. Enthemmerlee had, on my insistence, given me a list; but I didn’t know all the faces. The only ones I could see were missing were a handful of the Ikinchli guard; I hoped they were on duty, and not tucked away plotting their mistress’ demise.

Someone tried to thrust a tankard into my hand, but others were beginning to stare and mutter. Time I left, before they decided I was here to spy for their masters.

I smiled as best I could and backed out, straight into the seneschal, who was staring at the partiers. His face was expressionless, but you could have played his spine like the string on a lute. He hissed something at those nearest. They pretended not to hear.

“Madam Steel,” he said, with a frigid little bow.

“Seneschal.”

“I was looking for you.”

“You were?”

“There is someone at the door who
insists
upon seeing you,” he said.

“Wha?” My first, insane thought was Laney. But even Fey magic wouldn’t transport her across the sea and through a portal at that speed. “Who is it?”

“He says his name is Mokraine.”

I stared at the seneschal, so deeply confused it felt like being drunk. I wondered if he was lying, or up to something, but I couldn’t imagine how he would even know of Mokraine’s existence. But he made me twitchy; he had the look of someone wound so tight that if the wrong pressure was applied, he would spring apart, with little cogwheels and nasty pointy bits flying in all directions.

“Mokraine? Here?”

“That is what he says he is called.”

I followed the seneschal’s rigid back.

At the door was the guard, Brodenay, and one bedraggled warlock, with a miserable-looking familiar at his heels.

“Ah, Babylon,” Mokraine said. “An interesting place. So much emotion in the air.”

“Mokraine, what are you
doing
here?”

“Talking to this young man,” he said. “This is a decaying culture, sadly lacking in magical history. I’m wet.”