The Tainted City (13 page)

“No, and that’s the oddest part,” Halassian said. “According to our informants, the mages died in their own homes.”

Kiran said, “I know Alathian laws restrict what wards mages may use, but here, the wards on a workroom might be equally as powerful as any Sechaveh has on the Aiyalen Spire. If the mages’ personal wards triggered in the way we just saw, the overspill could easily be fatal.”

Halassian grunted. “True, but we’ve heard no reports of wardfire like that in the residential sections.”

“What else have you learned?” Marten asked.

“Very little.” Halassian’s scowl spoke of frustration. “Sechaveh hasn’t let anyone not in his employ set foot in the dead mages’ houses. He’s got a Seranthine scholar, a sand mage, in charge of the investigation. Weedy little fellow, but clever as a kitfox and tightlipped as they come. Our usual informants claim not to know anything else, and ordinary Arkennlanders all clam up the instant they realize one of us is nearby. I dare not use any listening spells, not with every mage and highsider covered in defensive charms.”

She looked at me, her expression lightening. “That’s why Dev here will come in handy. I’ll wager he can find out more in one night streetside than we could learn in weeks up here. We’ll have our work cut out for us sifting fact from embellishment, but I’d far rather worry about that than have no information at all.”

“I’ll do what I can,” I said. “Assuming I can step outside your wards without Ruslan leaping on me.”

Marten said, “That’s why it’s vital our audience with Sechaveh goes well. Those of you coming to Kelante Tower, listen to me…” He beckoned to Kessaravil, who approached with a fluid grace surprising in a man so muscle-bound. Stevan, Lena, and Talm lost some of their distant air, focusing with sober attention on Marten.

“The meeting will be a delicate diplomatic situation,” Marten said. “As such, I must insist that no one but me speaks to Sechaveh unless I explicitly give you permission. I’ll enforce silence if I have to.” He gave me a particularly pointed look.

I scowled. Yeah, I got the message. He’d shut me up with magic the minute I dared to open my streetsider mouth.

“I must also ask that you trust my judgment and follow my lead, whatever Sechaveh may say.” This time his gaze swept across the mages of the Watch.

“Of course, Captain.” Lena’s words were as slow as Stevan’s had been, but full of calm assurance. The others murmured assent.

“Good,” Marten said. “I have a few Council matters to discuss with Halassian before we leave for the audience—Halassian, perhaps your lieutenants can show my team their quarters, and where our supplies may be stowed?”

Halassian waved a hand. “Jenoviann, Kessaravil, if you would?”

Jenoviann had none of Kessaravil’s grace. She stalked along beside him as stiff as a bone puppet as they led us back to the sigil-marked room to retrieve our packs. Though her gaunt face remained impassive, I caught her darting repeated glances at Kiran, and I didn’t think she was admiring his looks.

Packs in hand, we followed her down another short hallway to a set of interconnecting rooms furnished with simple but sturdy beds and a few chairs. From the scuff marks on the bare walls and the rumpled look of the rugs, I suspected the rooms had been hurriedly converted to bedrooms from storage space.

Kiran and I dumped our packs in a room that held two narrow beds and a round window. The window was far smaller than the one in the embassy’s receiving room, but the view of magelit spires against the sawtoothed bulk of the Whitefires was equally magnificent.

I peered out, careful not to touch the wards on the sill. Beyond was an eight-story drop to the nearest bridge. Highside towers always had enough carved friezes and depressions between blocks to make a climb possible, if tricky. But the window’s wards were powerful and well-placed. They were designed to prevent intruders from getting in, not leaving; if I could climb out without touching the frame, they wouldn’t fully trigger. They’d flare enough to warn Marten I’d crossed them, though, and once outside I wouldn’t be able to climb back in. Not that I had any intention of leaving the embassy’s wards on my own while Rulsan was salivating for any means he could use to get at Kiran. But if we gained the protection Marten hoped for from Sechaveh, I wanted to find Cara, preferably without any Alathian watchdogs in tow.

The thought drew my gaze down to the dark, winding maze of streets far below. No magelights down there. Only the sparks of lanterns, and the ruddy glow of smelters’ fires. The outer districts would be more lively, as pack trains prepared to head out to the mines of the Whitefires’ lower slopes before the summer sun turned the Painted Valley into a furnace.

Somewhere down streetside, Melly would be returning from a night spent looting highside spires with the rest of Red Dal’s crew of Tainters. Thinking of it, a fire grew in my blood. I was truly in Ninavel! What with all the worry over Ruslan and wardfire after our arrival, I hadn’t had time to consider what that meant. Melly within reach, and Cara here to help me…a crazy, heady confidence bubbled up inside. Hell with Ruslan—I’d outplayed him once before. I’d outwit him, Marten, every last mage in this city, whatever it took.

Kiran joined me at the window. I ignored Stevan, who hovered like a sour-faced vulture a scant foot behind him, and asked, “How are you holding up?” I could see the answer in the white set of Kiran’s face, but it wouldn’t hurt for him to hear my concern.

“It feels so strange to be back in the city. I keep thinking perhaps this is all a dream, and I’ll awake…somewhere else.”

Not somewhere good, if the look in his eyes was anything to go by. I wished I could give him a fraction of the fierce confidence that filled me.

“Sometimes before tackling a challenging climb, outriders get this sense like you can feel the touch of Khalmet’s good hand. No matter what the mountain might throw at you, you know you’ll stand on the summit and come home alive.”

“You feel this now.” He was staring at me like he thought I’d gone mad.

“I do,” I admitted. “Maybe it’s just seeing Ninavel again, when I feared I never would. But when I’ve felt this way before a climb, I’ve never failed. Like Kinslayer crag. Remember when we got the carcabon stones to peek Pello’s wards?”

“You nearly died on Kinslayer.” Memory darkened his eyes; if anything, he looked more upset.

True. I’d leapt to clear a sheer, holdless stretch of rock, and one hand had missed its grip. Thank Khalmet, I’d gotten a heel hooked on the ledge above before my other hand failed and sent me tumbling to splatter on sharp-edged talus. How my blood had sung afterward! I couldn’t stop a wistful sigh.

“I didn’t die, and that’s the point,” I told Kiran. “Doesn’t matter how close you come if you walk away whole. Hell, it just makes for a better story to savor.”

“Savor.” He passed a hand over his eyes. “Sometimes I don’t understand you at all.”

“No?” I looked out at the sharp black outline of the Whitefires, each peak and notch so gloriously familiar. “Think about your magic being unbound tonight. Then tell me if that’s worth all you’re enduring now.” I knew what I’d feel, if I could have the Taint back again.

He stilled. “It is,” he said softly. “But perhaps that frightens me most of all.”

Chapter Seven

(Dev)

S
echaveh’s audience chamber looked a lot different than I expected. I’d assumed someone rich as him would want to show it off. Khalmet knew every inch of the highsider houses I’d sneaked into as a kid had been covered in jade statues, gem-studded mosaics, and exotic wood and bone carvings.

But when Kiran and I filed into the chamber with Marten and his little crew, the walls and high dome of the ceiling showed nothing but creamy marble polished smooth as glass. Then again, Sechaveh didn’t need any fancy statues. The audience chamber sat in the very summit of Kelante Tower, and the view out the broad windows spaced around the room was breathtaking. To the west, city spires linked by a delicate lacework of bridges stood silhouetted against the Whitefires, whose jagged summits glowed crimson with dawn. Eastward across the sagebrush and alkali flats of the Painted Valley, shadow still softened the arid brown ridgelines of the lower, less rugged Bolthole Mountains.

Sechaveh himself sat on the room’s north side in a hulking stone chair, his clothes all creams and tans except for a deep purple cloth tied loosely around his throat. At first glance you might mistake him for somebody’s kindly old uncle, with his long silver hair tied back in a simple tail and his brown face seamed with laugh lines. But the eyes glinting under his half-closed lids were as flat and yellow as those of a nightclaw lizard.

On the floor before the chair, three concentric rings of obsidian marked with silver runes were set in the floor. A sea of flame roiled and heaved within the innermost ring, in colors shading from deepest violet through blue to a molten white. I’d have thought it some highside version of a firestone charm if not for the way Kiran checked when he saw it, his blue eyes going wide.

“What is it?” I whispered to him, as Marten halted some ten paces from the ring.

“The energies, so strong—I think the rings must form a…a type of window, onto the confluence…” Kiran fell silent as we came up behind Marten. The other Alathians ranged themselves behind us, Stevan near breathing down Kiran’s neck.

Marten bowed deeply. “Lord Sechaveh, thank you for granting us audience. I am Captain Martennan of the Seventh Watch. You’ll see in my credentials that I am authorized by the Alathian Council to represent their interests with full diplomatic powers…” He skirted the obsidian rings to hand a set of papers embossed with the Council’s seal to Sechaveh. “The Council is most concerned over the recent magical disturbances originating in Ninavel. I offer you the expertise of myself and the other members of my team, to assist you in finding the source of these disturbances and preventing damage to your city.”

Sechaveh flicked a desultory glance over the papers. His laugh lines creased, though his lizard’s eyes never changed. “Ah, yes. I had wondered how long it would take the Council to send someone begging at my door. Desperate to fix up your border wards, are you?”

Marten didn’t let the hit show, only smiled and said, “No more than you are eager to prevent any disruption of Ninavel’s water supply. I saw the wardfire on the Aiyalen Spire last night. A spectacular sight, though perhaps a trifle worrying to the merchant houses.”

Well, that was putting it mildly. The highsiders we’d passed on our way to the tower had been skittish as kicked cats, giving us wide berth accompanied by a host of wary, sidelong glances. Those living in the districts near Aiyalen who remembered the casualties and destruction of the mage wars were likely packing up to hightail it out of the city.

Sechaveh chuckled, a dry, crackling sound like pinewood burning. “Ninavel is not a city for the faint of heart, Captain. I assure you, these…disturbances, as you call them…will not affect the city’s trade.”

“Then you have discovered their source, and know how to stop them?” Marten stepped forward, his shopkeeper’s face going earnest. “If so, by all means, turn me away. If not—consider, Lord Sechaveh: we share a common problem, and you know how motivated we are to solve it. Any information my team and I discover would be shared without reservation. As proof of the Council’s goodwill, they offer a ten percent reduction on import taxes for the Ninavel merchant houses of your choice for five years, if you will give my team your sanction and protection.”

Clever. Sechaveh was so rich that more coin for his own vaults wouldn’t be much of an incentive, but he still played plenty of power games. A carrot to dangle in front of the greedy merchant houses vying for ascendancy in Ninavel had to be attractive.

“An interesting offer.” Sechaveh surveyed us. His gaze passed over the Alathians quickly, but lingered a moment on me, and far longer on Kiran. Unease crept through me. If Pello had reported to Sechaveh the tale of our convoy trip, Sechaveh might suspect just how useful a bargaining token Kiran could be.

Sechaveh straightened in his chair. “Shall I share some information with you now, Captain? The magical fluctuations that trouble your border wards are caused by brief-lived but explosive upheavals in the confluence of earth-power beneath this city.”

Marten’s face didn’t change, but beside me, Kiran drew in a sharp breath. Yeah, explosive sure didn’t sound good to me.

“Do you know the cause of these upheavals?” Marten asked.

Sechaveh smiled thinly. “The cause remains to be determined. Captain, I am no mage, but I understand something of Alathian magic. You are not experts in the use of confluence energies. In a situation as delicate as this, I cannot afford to have well-intentioned but inexpert mages meddling with the great forces of the Well of the World.”

Marten said, “I understand your concern, Lord Sechaveh. But unlike many mages in Ninavel, our magic does not depend on the confluence. We need not disturb its forces when we cast. Consider further: how well do you trust the mages you rule? These disturbances might well be caused by one of them seeking to depose you. You know our motive in this matter, and it has nothing to do with your rule of the city. You can trust we cannot be suborned, and will report to you the whole of all we find.”

Sechaveh tapped his ringed fingers one after the other against the stone of his chair. “You make a good argument, Captain. Yet I must be cautious with the confluence, and have not the expertise to fully judge your claim that your magic does not disturb it. Here is my offer: you may make your case to my lead investigator. If he agrees to accept your help and you are willing to work under his direction, then I will gladly take your Council’s terms. I’ll give you and your team sanction to perform magic without restriction, and such protection as I can provide.”

Marten smiled brightly, but I could tell from the rigidity of his posture he wasn’t happy. I wasn’t either. Every moment we stood here gave Ruslan more time to plan his spellwork, and now we’d have to wait for yet another meeting?

“Call in a mage to verify our methods of casting if you must, but would it not be better for us to act independently?” Marten asked. “Especially if one among your inner circle is a traitor.”