Shadows of Asphodel (11 page)

Ardis wondered if he was thinking of killing Sven. No, of bringing him back.

“Can you start tomorrow?” Konstantin said.

Wendel twisted the faucet handle. “What?”

“Your three days. Does tomorrow work for you?”

“No.”

Konstantin frowned. “But we—”

“Don’t worry, archmage,” Wendel said quietly. “I will give you what I promised. Even if I can’t do it immediately.”

But he looked at Ardis when he said it.

“Two hours until Vienna,” she said. “At most.”

Wendel shrugged his coat over his shoulders. His fingertips lingered on his scar. He traced the length of it, then buttoned his coat.

“Please,” he said, “excuse me. I should rest before our arrival.”

As Wendel turned to go, Ardis glimpsed a grim kind of hope in his eyes.

~

Ardis sat alone in the observation car, still wearing her sword, and rested her head against the back of the seat. Mindlessly, she watched the scenery go by. The tracks rattling under the train reminded her of a clock ticking down.

Dread pooled in her gut. What did Wendel plan to do in Vienna?

He wouldn’t tell her the truth, even if she asked, of that much she was sure. He was distant again. Their kiss felt so faraway. She exhaled slowly. It was best if they parted ways in Vienna. If she forgot about him.

Though she wasn’t sure she could.

Ardis’s eyelids slipped shut, and she let sleep creep over her mind.

“Ma’am?” Someone touched her shoulder. “Excuse me, ma’am?”

She jolted awake and saw a conductor leaning over her. She realized her hand was on the hilt of Chun Yi, and she forced herself to relax.

“Where are we?” she said.

“Vienna,” said the conductor. “This is our last stop.”

“Oh, no.”

Adrenaline flooded her blood. She had overslept.

Ardis lunged to her feet, ignoring the conductor’s protests, and sprinted to the sleeper car. Their cabin was, of course, empty.

She ran back down the passageway and darted through the nearest open door.

Plunged into a crowd, Ardis fought to see her surroundings. The ceiling of the Vienna train station vaulted overhead, iron and glittering glass holding the night sky at bay, and all around her were people, swarms of people.

She zigzagged through the crowd. Their train had halted at the rightmost platform in the station, and she hurried along its length. Her mind whirred through possibilities. Wendel could have escaped at the earliest possible opportunity.

Or the Order of the Asphodel could have found him already.

Sven hadn’t been too cunning, but he was barely more than a messenger. If she were trying to catch a necromancer, she would post guards at his point of arrival. Undercover guards, of course, waiting at every door of the train.

Ardis let her mind slip into a state of observant calm.

Nearby, a man leaned against a column, his hat shadowing his face. He had no suitcase, and he was definitely looking for someone. Farther along, at the entrance to the lobby, a man stood with his arms crossed and his head high. Another stood at the doorway to the baggage area, not even trying to look inconspicuous.

Clearly they hadn’t seen Wendel, if they were still waiting.

Ardis scanned the lights overhead. There wasn’t enough darkness here for the shadows of Amarant to be effective. If she were Wendel, she would have disguised herself and left the train station as fast as possible.

Keeping her head down, she followed the flow of the crowd out into the night.

Rain hushed from the sky over Vienna. Puddles glittered with the lights of the city, and spray hissed from the wheels of passing automobiles. Ardis flipped up the hood of her jacket and strode to the center of the plaza.

She tasted bitterness in her mouth. Wendel was gone. And she—

“Ardis.”

A voice in the crowd, faint, but not too faraway. She spun around, searching, but she didn’t see anyone familiar.

“Ardis!”

A hand closed on her wrist. She spun around—it was Wendel.

He dragged her from the plaza and into the darkness. He pushed her against the bricks of a wall, his grip tight on her wrist.

Her breath fogged the air. “I thought you were gone,” she said.

Wendel looked into her eyes, rain sliding down his face. In the shadows, they were all but invisible to the passersby on the street.

“I will be,” he whispered, “in a minute.”

She glowered at him. “Then why did you—?”

He kissed her, hard and fast, the length of his body pressing against hers. She couldn’t decide where to put her hands. She slid them down his neck, his back, lower still. Shivering electricity washed over her skin, and she didn’t know if it was because of his necromancy or her own nerves coming alive under his touch.

He broke away from her. “Goodbye.”

“No.” She nearly growled the word.

Ardis shoved him back a few steps, then spun him around so he was the one pinned against the wall. She wasn’t going to be gentle this time, not now that he wasn’t wounded, not now that he wanted to leave her.

His eyebrows shot skyward, and he opened his mouth to speak.

She kissed him again. He returned the kiss with the same feverish desperation she felt building inside her chest. She knew they only had a moment together in the shadows, but damn it, she was going to make it last.

They broke apart after too short of a time, both of them gasping for breath.

“You can’t leave me like this,” she said, her voice uneven.

He looked into her eyes. “You know I have to.”

She stared at him, her skin still tingling, and licked her lips.

“Then promise you will come back,” she said. “Promise me.”

Wendel bowed his head, backed away, and nodded. His hand closed on the hilt of Amarant, and shadows swirled around him. In an instant he had dissolved into the darkness, leaving nothing but the memory of a kiss.

There had been a look in his eyes. A look both sad and terrifyingly familiar.

He was afraid he was never coming back.

Ardis tilted her head and stared into the sky. Rain splashed on her upturned face. Then she pressed her fingertips to her eyelids.

She had to forget him. She had no future with a necromancer.

It had been a thrilling dream, but that dream was over. With a steadying breath, she stepped from the shadows into the light.

The night was still young when Ardis arrived at the Hall of the Archmages. She nodded at the guards as she entered, noting how useless their ornamental halberds would be in battle. The archmages certainly loved pomp and circumstance. Her boots clicked on the marble floor, the sound echoing under the vaulted dome. Out of habit, she glanced heavenward at the dome’s celestial mosaic of blue and gold tiles.

Once she had found this all magnificent. Now it merely wearied her.

The doors to the Council Chamber stood open, flanked by guards. She glanced inside. The High Council had convened, all the archmages dressed in velvet robes. They spoke ponderously, like every word was profound.

With a sigh, Ardis sat on a marble bench and waited.

Her eyes felt gritty, her muscles exhausted, even though it couldn’t be past seven o’clock. She rubbed her face with the heels of her hands, then inspected her sword’s scabbard. The sharkskin had begun to crack over the wood. Ardis wondered if the scabbard was original, since her mother claimed Chun Yi was over a hundred years old. After the archmages paid her, she would look for a decent swordsmith in Vienna.

At last, after an eternity or two, the archmages shuffled out of the Council Chamber.

Ardis climbed to her feet and stood at attention. She waited for Archmage Margareta, an elderly woman whose sleek pewter hair shimmered above crimson robes. The red color signaled her expertise in incendiary magic.

“Ma’am?” Ardis said.

Archmage Margareta acknowledged her with a nod and a keen blue-eyed stare.

“Ardis,” she said. “Walk with me.”

Ardis followed the archmage down the hall and through several twists and turns, until they reached her office. Oak paneled the walls, and a maid tending the fireplace curtseyed before scurrying out of sight. Archmage Margareta lowered herself stiffly, afflicted with arthritis, into the leather armchair behind her desk.

“Ma’am.” Ardis took a seat opposite her. “The mission went well enough.”

“The Serbian spy is dead?” Margareta said.

Ardis nodded, then unclasped a chain at her neck and removed a gold-and-sapphire ring.

“I took this from Tiberiu,” she said. “As requested.”

From his cold dead finger, though she had washed off the blood.

Margareta squeezed a loupe onto one eye, then pinched the ring between her fingers and inspected the inscription on the inside.

“
Veni, vidi, vici
,” she muttered. “Tiberiu was a cocky fellow, wasn’t he?”

Ardis shrugged. “Easy enough to find and kill.”

Maybe she didn’t have a moral objection to killing on the job.

Margareta slid open a desk drawer, took out a coin purse, and tossed it to her. It hit the desk with a satisfying clank that could only be gold.

“Your payment,” Margareta said.

“Thank you, ma’am.”

Margareta steepled her hands on her desk. “There is a much more profitable job available,” she said, “but it starts this Monday. You would have only Saturday to rest, and would need to spend all of Sunday travelling.”

Ardis arched one eyebrow. “I’m listening.”

“Do you know of Dr. Rudolf Diesel?” Margareta said.

“Of course.”

“He’s a brilliant man, one of Germany’s finest engineers. However, he has a certain tendency to be disloyal to his homeland.”

Ardis kept any judgment from her face. “Oh?”

Margareta thinned her lips as if she had tasted something unpleasant. “Diesel was a student at the Royal Bavarian Polytechnic of Munich, but he was born in Paris and spent some of his childhood in London. Now he plans to journey back to London for a crucial meeting of the Consolidated Diesel Engine Manufacturers.”

That sounded reasonable to Ardis, but she kept quiet.

“Diesel’s desire to help the British engineers has earned him the displeasure of several powerful people within the German Empire. We suspect that there is a plot to…
convince
him of his loyalty to Germany, and it could end rather badly unless we do something. The archmages of Vienna have agreed that we should prevent this.”

Ardis frowned and glanced into her eyes. “You want me to be his bodyguard?”

Margareta smiled. “You always have a knack for stating things plainly.”

“Where?” she said.

“Diesel’s steamer leaves from Antwerp on Monday evening.”

“Belgium?” Ardis tilted her head. “That sounds better than Transylvania.”

If she closed her eyes, she could still see the blood-splattered snow of the battlefield; could still see Wendel when she found him.

Margareta held out her hands. “Is it a yes?”

“I’ll do it,” she said.

“Good.” The archmage handed her a sealed envelope. “This contains the details about the mission. For now, you can go.”

Ardis slipped the envelope into her jacket pocket. “Thank you, ma’am.”

“You look quite tired,” Margareta said. “Was the journey here long?”

Tired. Such a small word to describe the fatigue that filled her bones with lead.

“It was,” she said.

“Rest,” Margareta said, with a magnanimous smile.

Ardis strode to the doorway, then hesitated, her back turned to the archmage. She clenched her jaw. She doubted Margareta had ever been on a battlefield, and certainly she had never killed anyone. She could afford to be polite.

Ardis glanced back. “There was a necromancer.”

That startled some fear into Margareta’s eyes.

“Excuse me?” she said.

“A necromancer. In Transylvania.”

Margareta froze with a handful of papers hovering above her desk. Her nostrils flared. When she spoke, it was in a hushed voice.

“Sit back down,” she said.

Ardis did as she was told.

“I found him on the battlefield,” Ardis said. “He was badly wounded, bleeding out. He still managed to attack me by reviving a dead dog.”

She heard admiration in her own voice, and she swallowed hard.

“Who is this necromancer?” Margareta said.

“Wendel,” she said. “He told me his name is Wendel, and he works for the Order of the Asphodel. Worked. He doesn’t want to go back.”

Margareta narrowed her eyes. “What did you do?”

Ardis clasped her hands in her lap. “I took him prisoner, at first, but since I saved his life he swore fealty to me. He travelled with me as far as Vienna.”

“He’s here?” The archmage blew out her breath. “Right now?”

“I don’t know, ma’am,” she said, which was the truth. “But Konstantin might.”

Margareta tugged on a bell cord to summon a servant. A maid rapped on the door.

“Bring me Konstantin Falkenrath,” Margareta said.

Ardis waited patiently. When Konstantin stepped into Margareta’s office, he was still wearing his dusty travelling clothes. He blinked a few times, like he had been spending too much time in a dark room, and ducked his head.