The Guild (6 page)

Within a matter of minutes, she reached the wood and stone tenement building which was her home while in Heiastowne. This one was occupied by tenants from various guilds. Though some apprenticeships came with lodgings, usually in the home of whatever master had been assigned to teach said apprentices, not all of them did. The Servers Guild was one of those that didn’t.

It had been decided long ago that no member of that guild would stay overnight in any temple or priest’s home, just to be safe. The guild had also raised its members’ wages so that they could afford to rent rooms . . . and had withheld all services from all priests when some of those priests had tried to incarcerate their servants on their properties to keep them past their service hours. Peer pressure had forced the release of the maidservants, footmen, housekeepers, and butlers. But while the wages had been raised to pay for lodgings elsewhere, that raise hadn’t been much, and her tenement reflected it.

The leftenant dismounted when she started up the external stairs. The operator didn’t come with them, though he did shut off his engine. A glance behind showed the leather-armored man settling into the saddle to wait the leftenant’s return. It also showed the leftenant moving up behind her, clearly determined to follow her all the way home. Wincing, she moved up the steps. At the fourth floor, she strode along the open balcony. Their boots clomped on the wood, both hers and his.

The only thing that showed almost a dozen Servers lived here was how well the snow had been scraped off the balconies and steps of the whole building compared to the one directly across from it. All of them got together in the mornings and the evenings after a snowfall to keep the balcony and steps clear, since living on the fourth floor meant a very dangerous fall should they slip on an icy
surface. It also meant a slight break for them in the cost of living here in winter, if they swept and shoveled.

Fourth floor rooms in winter were usually a bit warmer than ground or first floor ones, and thus were more expensive. Size was another factor. When she unlocked her tenement, there was only one room to it; that was another cost kept down. The right-hand wall was a mass of brick, since every room above and below hers had its own hearth, and they all shared a wall for the chimney spaces. Midday in winter, it could be quite cold if the others were out and about when their hearth fires were either banked or gone out. At midnight, it could be cold, too, but it was now close to supper, and that meant people were coming home and lighting fires, preparing food.

Her breath didn’t frost inside her tenement, but it wasn’t exactly warm, either. Grabbing her spare coat off one of the pegs by the door, she shrugged quickly into the felted wool and picked up the sparker and oil lamp from the shelf above it. Light came in from the narrow window by her door and the slightly broader window at the back of the somewhat narrow, rectangular room, but she carried the lamp to the table and lit it with a squeeze of the spring-loaded arm that scraped a bit of flint over a coil of steel.

Her teeth still threatened to chatter, though the coat helped somewhat. Unfortunately, it was a summer-weight coat, not winter weight. More heat would be needed. Ignoring the leftenant, she crouched by the hearth in the middle of the wall and used the fire tongs that came with the room to scrape back the ashes, hoping for a couple live coals. Grateful there were a few, she reached for the coal bucket, not the kindling box, and laid sooty black lumps on the glowing orange ones. It would take a while for the room to heat up, but at least she had started the process.

Only after she had washed her hands in the bowl of water by the front door did the leftenant speak. He didn’t seat himself on the sole chair in the room nor on the edge of her bed—not that she
had invited him to make himself comfortable, but he didn’t seem upset at the lack of courtesy. Instead, he got straight to the point.

“I know you were
assigned
to be a Server in the temple, Longshanks,” the older man stated without preamble, making her heart skip a beat. She turned to stare at him, absently wiping her hands on the cloth hung on the rod along the side of the washstand, and watched him dip his head to her. “And I know
who
assigned you to watch the priests as well as serve them.”

He . . . he works with the mages?
She stared at him, wide-eyed and unsure whether to be relieved or afraid.

Taking off his leather helmet, he set it on the table with a sigh, then scrubbed a gloved hand over his short-cropped hair, as if relieving a full-scalp itch. Smoothing the ginger-brown locks back from his face, he wrinkled his nose. “I need to know what happened in there, Longshanks. I need to know if . . . He . . . is actually gone. The only thing keeping this town from going mad is the bitter cold and the shock of disbelief, and I
will not
have Heiastowne overrun and burned down by rioting. So tell me, what did you see in the temple?”

S
he honestly did not know if she could trust the man. He was militia, and the militia had special squads sent out by the officers—at the prodding of the priesthood, admittedly—to hunt down and capture mages. But . . . the
purpose
for the Hunter Squads no longer existed, as far as she knew. If she could convince this man of that, then
maybe
word would spread, and the Hunter Squads could be disbanded. That would save a lot of mages’ lives.

Hands dry, she slipped on a spare pair of leather gloves, pulled a knitted cap over her head for warmth while the fresh coals slowly caught, and folded her arms across her chest. “I saw two mages brought in . . . and midway through interrogating them, before the priests could bind either one . . . every last cog and gear of Mekha’s decorations vanished from the walls and from the priests’ embroidered robes. The outlander mage they were interrogating,
he
claimed it meant that Mekha had been dissolved. And then, later . . . they
were making us haul all the prisoners up out of the basement rooms, where we weren’t supposed to go, before.

“While I was down there . . . I saw Mekha’s power room.” She shivered, more from the memory than from the cold. Then she shivered again from the chill in the air. What she wanted to do was crawl under the felted-wool blankets on her bed and huddle there until she and her room were both truly warm, but she couldn’t.

“And?” Surprisingly, he didn’t ask her what the chamber looked like. Nor did he ask her where her accent had gone. If he knew she was Rexei Longshanks, if he knew she was a journeyman of the Actors Guild, then he’d know she could don and doff an accent at will.

“And it was crumbling. Pillars with crystals disintegrating. Some sort of chair-thing at the heart of it, cracking and sloughing off in clumps, like you’d let garden dirt fall from your hands.”

“
And
?” he prompted when she fell silent. “I know you’re bright enough to have observed far more than that, Longshanks. Give me the details.”

She folded her arms across her chest. “That’s for my unnamed client to know, and it’s time for you to get out of my tenement. I’ve answered your questions. Now, go.”

He stepped close to her. She didn’t have anywhere to retreat, since next to the washstand was the table and cupboards where she kept what little food she cooked. Lifting her chin, Rexei tried to stare down the taller man.

“You’re brave, I’ll give you that. But these are
priests
, lad,” he warned her, fooled by her slim frame and ambiguous, youthful face, as everyone had been. “And they now have your cap and your coat. All they need to track you down is a hair plucked from either. They can tuck that into a tracking amulet and
find
you . . . save for one location. If they realize you saw or heard anything you weren’t supposed to—if they now know, after watching that blowhard’s
ploy at making trouble for you, that you
aren’t
just a mere Servers apprentice—then they will come for you. And they will try to demand the Precinct’s help.

“I am trying to find out if that will happen or not . . . because if Mekha
is
truly gone, the captain and I are
not
giving anyone else to the priests ever again,” he finished grimly, moving close enough that she could feel the heat of his breath on her face. “But we don’t have any magic to counteract their abilities. And I know you don’t have full access to the one place where they cannot find you. Yet. So give me a reason to help you.”

She didn’t know what to make of him. It was clear he
knew
things . . . and that implied he was one of
them
, too . . . but neither of them could ask each other outright questions. Not here. The sanctuary he alluded to was not in Heiastowne, though it wasn’t far by motorhorse. But mentionable or not, he knew who Rexei Longshanks was—as much as she had let anyone know—and he was the Precinct leftenant.

One thing he was not was slimy feeling. Nor brittle and harsh like a cracker, like the man who had bruised her shoulder and hauled her to the leftenant’s side. Instead, the leftenant reminded her more of a fine leather coat. Precise, tailored—a finished product, not rawhide. He was also not a bully like so many other officers she had warily watched in other Precincts, men who would not have hesitated to beat an answer out of her with the back of a hand. This leftenant seemed to actually care about his city. Ambivalence warred within her, between the need to flee far away and establish a new identity elsewhere, and the stacking of subtle facts that said he might be semi-trustworthy.

Mekha is gone
, Rexei reminded herself, and shrugged defensively. “I overheard the foreign man—not an Arbran but from somewhere else—telling the priests of . . . an alternate power source. Other than draining you-know-whats dry.”

One
thought
of the word
mage
in the kingdom of Mekhana, but one rarely ever said it aloud. It was whispered that priests had ways of tracking the word, spells that could pluck it out of the wind and backtrack it to its source. No one had a spell that could penetrate and reveal the privacy of a person’s very thoughts. So while her claim made the leftenant narrow his eyes in wary puzzlement, he only mouthed the forbidden word; he did not say it aloud.

Instead, he said, “What alternate power source?”

Hoping she wasn’t making a mistake, Rexei murmured one word, “Demons.”

He stumbled back from her, shock widening his light brown eyes. Rexei felt unsettled herself; she had never seen any militia officer so quickly discomposed. They were bastions of power, authority, and in many cases cruelty. This man’s composure had been shattered, though. He stared at her, clutched at his head, stared, and turned first toward the door, then back to the rest of the room, then toward the door again, as if unable to decide what to do or where to go.

“Demons,” he whispered, no longer even looking at her. “It starts
here
 . . .
This
is where it starts!”

It was her turn to frown at him. Eyes narrowed, she opened her mouth to ask—but he interrupted her, snapping his fingers and pointing at the majority of her tenement.

“Start packing!”

“What? I’m not packing!” Rexei argued, though her heart pounded with fear. She
was
going to pack. Her assignment from the Mages Guild be damned; she would only pack as soon as he was gone, make her report, and head for the northern hills—or maybe the southern, head to Sundara in the hopes of escaping everything. But she wasn’t about to let
him
know that. “I’m not going anywhere with
you
. I’ve done nothing wrong!”

He swung back to face her, ending his awkward pacing. “Oh,
you’ve done nothing wrong, I’ll agree. But the moment the
priests
find out you know
that
, your life will be worth
nothing
, lad. There is only one place in this whole kingdom, or what’s left of it, where you will be safe. Trust me, their ambitions did
not
end with Mekha,” the leftenant warned her, pointing at her face. “And
your
knowledge is needed to save the whole world. Start packing.”

“Why?” she demanded.

“I’m taking you to the one place where
both
of us know you’ll be safe . . . though neither of us dares say why. It’s not like you have that much to pack,” he added gruffly, looking at the stark contents of her tenement room. “Now, be quick about it. The faster we get you out of here, the faster we’ll have you in the one place where they cannot get a hold of you.”

She only had the bits of furniture, such as the table, chair, cupboards, and bed, simply because they came with the room. Most tenements had at least a few basic amenities, thanks to the efforts of the Consulates representing the many, many lessees across Mekhana in negotiations with the Lessors Guild. Even the lamp, the sparker, the coal bucket, and the wood bin were borrowed, but then Rexei didn’t own a clothes chest, either; what she owned, minus two of the blankets on her bed, could fit into a single large pack that could be hefted onto her back. With her other coat missing, she could add in one of those blankets.

But she didn’t move yet. “How do I know this isn’t a trick to impress me into the militia?”

The leftenant frowned at her, then sighed heavily. “Because we’ll be headed due east, not west by southwest, and that is
all
I can say. If you’re Rexei Longshanks, hired to pose as a Servers Guild apprentice, then you
know
why I cannot say.”

West by southwest was the direction of the Precinct headquarters, with its barracks and training yards. East of Heiastowne lay the Heias Dam, in a valley that had been blocked off. Its runoff
powered various engines that drove the great presses and extrusion rollers of the Steelworks Guild and others. Eastward . . . was also the Vortex. The one place that could thoroughly confuse active magics and render mages too dizzy to concentrate if they weren’t keyed into the spells maintaining that sphere of instabilities.

Some of those spells prevented anyone from even talking about the fact there was more to the Heias Dam than power generation. Yes, she did know what he was talking about, and what he wasn’t able to talk about. The spells involved, enriched with generations of paranoia, prevented anything from being even hinted at in the presence of a priest or a priest sympathizer. To be questioned about it by a priest would cause complete amnesia regarding the secrets hidden behind the dam, or so she had been warned.

She didn’t know what the leftenant meant by,
It starts here. This is where it starts
. But she did know he was right about the priests’ reactions if they ever realized she knew about the demon-summoning thing. Because even without Mekha, they could band together, summon a powerful demon, and use the siphoned energies to power their own magics. If demons truly were superior to mages as a source, then the sheer level of power that could be siphoned from them was not a pleasant thought.

“Fine. But one hint of the wrong direction, and I’ll react badly,” she threatened, letting the implication sound as if she would attack him or steal his motorhorse and run. She’d run, but the most Rexei would do to him and the other militiaman would be to put them to sleep with a simple spell. A second one to make them forget they had ever met her, and she would be on her way with neither man the wiser. It was an escape plan that she already knew worked on priests, never mind non-mages. She’d been forced to test it on three in the past.

The leftenant flicked his hand at her meager belongings. “Hurry up, then. Don’t dawdle.”

Edging around him, she crossed to the cupboard built into the
wall next to the bed. Pulling out her travel pack as well as her clothes, she stuffed them inside, added in the basket of crocheting needles and soft balls of wool that sat near the hearth, then stuffed in as many blankets as she could.

As she worked, the leftenant crouched in front of her hearth and used the tongs to nudge apart the coals. Once that was done, he replaced the grate. “Your lease will have to expire, but I’ll see you’re compensated for the refund lost. We don’t want rumors that you’ve fled to get out, so as far as your fellow tenants will know, you’ll just vanish.”

“If I’m to walk out of town, I should go at night, when I’m less likely to be recognized,” Rexei pointed out.

“You won’t walk,” he countered.

She looked at him. “And being dragged out of here on a militia motorhorse isn’t going to cause people to talk?”

“You’ll not walk all the way,” he amended. “Head for the east gate. As soon as I’ve dropped off my corporal, I’ll come back and pick you up. I should make it back by the time you’re less than a quarter-mile from the city.”

Crossing back to the cooking cupboards, she pulled out a leather sack and stuffed in her bag of crushed oats for porridge, a waxed round of cheese, a waxed paper packet of dried fruit slices, and a bag of mixed beans. The sausage end she stuffed into a half loaf of bread, wrapped it in a kerchief, and put it into her coat pocket.

“Once we get where we’re going, leftenant,” Rexei found herself stating as she swung around to face him, “I am going to question you thoroughly about how
you
know about what we are not talking about.”

That caused him to quirk one of his brows, but the leftenant merely gave her a slight half-mocking bow. “As you wish, Sub-Consul. Though it will become apparent if you’ll simply be quiet and watch.”

He headed for the door. Rexei discovered she had one more question. “Hey.”

He turned to face her. “Yes?”

“You got a name?” she asked. “Or should I just call you Leftenant? Somehow I don’t think they’ll be all that friendly toward your title.”

“It’s my rank, not my title, and they already know about it. But they mostly call me Rogen Tallnose when I’m there. Try to refrain from any jokes about the family name while you’re there,” he added dryly. “Be a good guest, Longshanks, and you’ll be treated well. Remember that.”

He walked out the door before she could do more than frown in confusion. The leftenant was roughly average in height, maybe a tiny bit taller, but by no means the tallest man in town. Nor was his nose particularly “tall” in appearance, though it was a little longer and pointier than average. Unable to think of a reason to make fun of his name, Rexei fished out the sausage and bread and gnawed on it, then remembered belatedly to pull out her waterskin and fill it from the keg that fed the washstand. The splashing water competed with the rumble of the motorhorse starting up.