Swords & Dark Magic (16 page)

“If we get him—”

“There’s a thing about demons. Hurt them and they don’t think. They don’t think. They’ll go for any port in a storm and it’ll be dangerous as hell.”

Tewk leaned onto the table. “I’ll tell you. Korianth is poised to come in here. King Osric has his army in the field…waiting. A fire in the tower. That’s the signal. I’m to take out Jindus. Light the fire. It’s a simple job. And you have an army at your gates.”

“Demon fodder, if you don’t get Miphrynes
with
Jindus.”

Tewk’s head dropped a moment.

Then he looked up, and looked around, and looked straight at Willem. “How’s your nerve, kid?”

“Master!” Willem said, but Master was looking at him the same way.

“The students,” Master said, “are all I’ve got. All the town’s got, between them and
that.
Willem’s baffled the thing. He doesn’t know it. But he has.”

“Me?”

The word just fell out. Willem had time to draw a breath, and then Tewk’s hand shot out and grabbed him by the wrist.

“Master!”

“I’ll be borrowing him,” Tewk said. “I’ve got an army on the march and a cousin I already thought was a damned fool, but maybe he knows something. If what you describe gets Jindus—Korianth isn’t safe, either.”

“It won’t be,” Master said, not even mentioning what Tewk said about borrowing, or cousins. Willem tried to pry one of Tewk’s fingers loose—which he couldn’t do.

“Sorry,” Tewk said, and let go, then reached up and clapped Willem on the shoulder. “You’re smart and you’re fast. I tracked your footprints. Didn’t think to cloud them up, did you?”

“No,” Willem admitted faintly. He hadn’t had time. He’d been scared. He’d gotten in that door and he hadn’t even thought somebody who could tell he was doing magic could also find his way through the Alley and wouldn’t fall into the trick of wanting a door. Tewk hadn’t
wanted
a door, so he didn’t see one, or didn’t pay attention to it when he did. What Tewk had wanted was a magic-worker, and that was what he’d tracked—here. Right to Master and all of them.

And now Master as good as agreed with this man.

His stomach had turned queasy. And it was a very empty stomach.

And this was a rich man. By the standards of the Alley, this was a rich man, and talked about armies and the king.

“We’d like breakfast,” Willem said. “We’d like a good breakfast. And you can tell me what kind of spell you want, and I’ll write it. I’ll make it a good one.”

Tewk shook his head. “Breakfast, yes. But writing won’t do it.
You
have to fix whatever comes up.”

“I can’t.”

“You’ve been doing it, the wizard says.”

“Not—I didn’t, really.
You
saw through it. You tracked me.”

“A little Talent. A very little Talent. It’s useful, sometimes. But it gets me into messes like this. You’ll get your breakfast.” He fished his purse loose and turned it out on the table. Gold shone among the coins. Heavy gold. One piece could buy every shop on the Alley. There was silver, winking pale and bright. There were all sorts of coppers, clipped and not.

Tewk used his fingers to rake out most of the coppers, and shoved them across the table to Master. And pushed over several silvers and one of the bright new golds. “For the boy’s services,” he said. “And your silence. You can take the kids and get out of Wiscezan. Get over to the coast, set up in style…supposing the boy and I can slow Jindus down.” He looked straight at Willem then. “We take Jindus. That’s all you have to do. One, get me near him. Two, get me cover to light the signal fire. Then keep us hidden while my lazy cousin twice removed gets his army over here and gets the gates open. I’d recommend you keep the kids here, Master Wizard. You know magic, but I know armies. It’s not going to be good out there for a few days.”

“Understood,” Master said, and picked up the coins. He handed one to Jezzy. “Go down to the Ox and get us breakfast. This gentleman’s business can wait that long. Hot bread. Fresh bread. Butter. Fish. For this man, too. Go.”

Breakfast. Things rare in their lives. Jezzy scampered for the door with the coin and Willem just sank down on his heels where he stood, because he wasn’t there. He didn’t want to be there. He told the world so.

“Pretty damn good,” Tewk said, and nudged him with his boot. “I know you’re there. Can you get us both through the palace gate?”

“Maybe,” he said. “Maybe I can.”

“Willem,” Master said, and Willem got up, not feeling well at all. “Fetch me a scrap of paper, and a pen,” Master said, and Willem did that, one of the little pieces they used for spells.

“Bigger than that,” Master said, so Willem brought that, and Master uncapped the inkwell, dipped the quill, and wrote symbols on the scrap of paper. “That’s an unlock,” Master said.

“Thank you, sir,” Willem said. He could see how that was going to be useful.

Master used the larger piece of paper and wrote something long and elaborate, in the twisty way Willem had never yet been able to master. When Master finished, he held up the paper, not quite giving it to him.

“This,” Master said, “is a master’s paper. It ends your journeyman’s restrictions. You
will
be able to do a master’s spells if you take this. But if you take it, it will mark you as mine, and you will shine like a bonfire, once you leave the Alley, if you don’t take the Alley with you.”

“Maybe I should just be quiet, Master.”

“And what when you do get there? What will you do?”

“I’d hope you’d tell me, Master.”

A shake of Master’s head. “I can’t imagine what you’ll do. But you’ll smell like me. And you won’t
be
me. Do you understand?”

He was a journeyman of Illusion. He understood instantly how that helped. “And the—the
problem
we don’t talk about…can it tell?”

“Oh, maybe. Maybe it’ll know who’s really been holding the Alley together. It’ll know who could have brought it across town. But it’s not altogether
here,
with all that means. It has its limitations.”

An illusionist understood that, too.

“Don’t kill,” Master said. “Look at me. Don’t
intend
to kill. Especially not by magic. That takes you down a path you don’t ever want to set foot on. Do you understand me?”

He did. He nodded toward Tewk. “That’s his job.”

“Good lad. Just do what you know how to do. Take this. I advise you take it. You’ve earned it. Gods willing, you
will
earn it.”

He reached and took it from Master’s hand, and a tingle went through his hand and up his arm and to his heart. He couldn’t breathe for a moment. He wasn’t scared. He wasn’t anything. He
really
wasn’t anything. He looked at his
own hand
and couldn’t see it.

I want me back!
he thought, and there he was.

“That was
good,
” Tewk said.

“He needs to think,” Master said. “Go sit down in the corner, Willem, and think a while.”

Just like with important lessons. Go think. He did. And he tried not to think about demons. That was how they got in, if you started thinking about them. He thought about the whole Alley not being there, but that wasn’t too bright: if Wiggy or Hersey stepped out back and missed the steps they’d be mad. Really mad.

He marshaled his thoughts in a parade through what he had to do. Master had taught him how to do that. And everything was there. If nobody startled him, he felt stronger than he ever had.

Fool, maybe.

But a wizard couldn’t doubt. Every illusion came apart when you started doubting. He sat there concentrating on believing he could do most anything, but not being specific about what he could do, until Jezzy tapped at the door and brought in the biggest breakfast anybody had ever seen: Jezzy was sweating from just carrying it.

They ate. They had a good breakfast, and water—there was beer, too, but Master said they should save that until later, and Tewk said that was a good idea. Maybe he’d had Wiggy’s beer.

Master clapped Willem on the shoulder as he stood in the doorway, and Willem took one scared look back, afraid it was going to break his concentration. He looked at Almore and Jezzy, and the little room with all its shelves and books and papers, and their little table and benches and their pallets, and the faded red curtain—Master had a bed beyond that, in a little nook.

It was home.

Last, he looked Master in the eyes. They were gray and watery but they were still sharp enough to see all the way inside him, he was very sure of that.

“Yes, sir,” he said, and went out into the Alley. His Alley. With Tewk striding along with him.

“You lead,” Tewk said, which didn’t make him feel that much better.

“Mmm,” he said, trying not to talk. He was thinking hard, exactly how the Alley was, how there was just one door, to the Ox, and that was just a little blind pocket of an Alley, nothing interesting at all. He wasn’t interesting. He was just a kid in un-dyed linsey-woolsey, which mostly ended up gray or nondescript brown, a kid with brown hair, a nondescript face, maybe acne—nobody would look twice; and Tewk was just a workman with a hat, just a skullcap, and needed a shave, and carried a sack lunch and a hammer, which wasn’t against the law. They immediately found the Ox in front of them, and went in by the back door.

“Say, here!” Hersey said. “You think you can just walk through wi’ them dusty boots? We’re not the public walk, here! I just swept that floor!”

Hersey didn’t recognize them. Not at all.

“Sorry,” Willem said in a different voice, and he and Tewk walked out through the front door and kept going, up the street where he had never gone.

But he didn’t let himself think that. He came up this way a lot. So did Tewk. They were father and son, well, maybe a youngish uncle, and he was learning stonemasonry, and there was something—a cracked stone—wanting repairing up the hill.

Maybe it was inside the palace gate, that stone. Stones cracked in summer heat, just now and again, especially along old cracks, and they might want that fixed. They did. They’d be taking the measure for it and matching some chips for the color: he knew about stonemasons. His father had been—

His
uncle
was. Uncle Tewk. They were guild folk, and important in their own way, and gate guards were going to remember them when they saw them, that they had been coming and going through that gate for days.

He couldn’t sweat. It was a warm day, but he couldn’t sweat. They were going to do this in broad daylight, he and Tewk, and he didn’t think about what came next, just getting themselves and their business through that gate.

He’d never been near this place, not even before the duchess died. The gates loomed up, tall, with the figures of two lions on painted leather, red and brown. The guards looked at them in complete boredom. They were supposed to be here. They were a little late. The guards opened the gates for them, and they walked through, under the second gate, which could be slammed down in a hurry.

“Signal tower’s to the right,” Tewk muttered, which shook Willem’s concentration, scarily so.

“Shhsh,” Willem said fiercely, and Tewk shut up.

But saying that about the signal tower had made him think about the signal, and the army, and—

He had to stop it. Uncle Tewk. They had stone chips to compare. Had to fix the tower, was what. Broken stone. They could chisel it out and slip a new one in, cut to perfection.

“Broken stone,” he said. “That’s why we’re here.”

“I wondered,” Tewk said.

It got them across the cobbled inner courtyard and over toward the tower, at least. Steps went up the side of the wall at that point.

But—

“You!” someone yelled.

I can’t,
Willem thought, turning on his heel. It was one of the black-caps, with a sword out, with an angry look on his face.
I can’t, I can’t, I can’t…

Steel whispered beside him. Tewk had a dagger out. A
dagger,
for the gods’ sake—it wasn’t enough.

Was a
big
sword. Tewk…

Tewk was a black-cap officer.

The man stopped dead and looked confused. And saluted.

Tewk didn’t move.

“Sorry, sir,” the man said. “Sorry.”

“Good you are,” Tewk said. “Get up there and lay a fire. Big one.” This with a nod to the looming tower. “Put a squad on it.”

“Yes, sir.”

The man sheathed his sword and went running.

Tewk wasn’t stupid. Willem was sure of that, now. He stood there shaking in the knees, and Tewk stood there solid as the stone tower itself.

“Pretty good,” Tewk said. “Pretty
damned
good. You don’t even write ’em down. Never saw that before.”

“Who was I?” Willem remembered including himself in the disguise, and now it was coming unraveled.

“An old man. Pretty scary old man at that.”

“That’s good.” He’d broken out in sweat. They had to get out of here. There were gates and walls between them and freedom, and Master had said he had to bring the Alley with him, but he didn’t see the Alley anymore. Here was the palace grounds, a huge stone courtyard, towering stone walls, slit windows, and massive doors. They were in this place, and there was something dark inside, and there was no leaving until they’d done something he didn’t want to think about—

Which was bad, because he had to think about it and get them in deeper before he could get them out again.

Who’d get to the duke? Who’d be safe going through those doors?

Soldiers.

Maybe.

They’re all mercs. Nobody wants the black-caps traipsing through, not even Wiggy.

Servants.
He saw two men in livery crossing the yard. Which he didn’t see well enough. He needed to see it to cast it.

“Come on,” he said to Tewk, suddenly in a fever to get through this, get Tewk where he needed to go—not to think beyond that. Not to think about that dark thing. He knew what that was. He didn’t want to know. He didn’t think on it. He thought just about those two servants, and the closer he got, the better he knew what he had to cast. Only fancier. Fancy clothes gave orders. Plain clothes took them.