The Tainted City (27 page)

He spoke with all the fervor of some sun-touched temple cultist. It pissed me off. As I dodged left into an even narrower slit of an alley, I said, “You want to talk about abuses of power? What Marten did to Kiran was as bad as anything I’ve seen from a ganglord. Pretend all you like, but I know the truth: Alathia’s no different than here. Men with power sacrifice those without to get what they want. It’s just that in Ninavel nobody bothers to lie about it.”

Talm blew out a sharp, exasperated breath. I thought he’d argue, but instead he said, “What’s down here, anyway?”

“A place you can’t go.” I halted well short of the alley’s end, where a deceptively battered-looking door lurked in a grimy recess.

Talm had already stopped dead, his gaze riveted to the door. “Those are kill-strength wards.”

The ward lines lay hidden beneath the grime, but of course a mage didn’t need to see lines to peek a ward. “Yeah,” I said. “That’s only the half of it. That door leads to Acaltar’s best charm dealer. She commissions charms direct from highside mages, supplies ganglords and shadow men, and hears every last rumor in the city—but she doesn’t like strangers. At all. So you’re gonna wait out here while I go have a chat.”

“A little hard to protect you from out here,” Talm said. “Especially with those wards swamping my senses.”

I’d hoped the wards might stop him using magic to spy on me. I meant this chat to be a private one. “A necessary risk, if you want information. A half hour, that’s all I ask.”

Talm sighed. “Any longer, and I’ll break those wards to come for you. I won’t be happy about it, either.”

“If I don’t return by then, I’ll need you to come after me.” I eased up to the door and scratched on a battered copper plate at head height, then stood still, my hands raised and open.

After a moment’s silence, the wards flickered and the door cracked open. I slid inside, pushing through tattered prayer shrouds into a room whose walls glittered with charms, most of them deadly. Blood-boil, boneshatter, heartrot, poisonteeth, and more hung beside esoteric amulets whose runes I didn’t recognize. The acrid pall of belthis-root incense fogged the air, making my eyes water.

“Hadn’t thought to see you darken my door in high summer, boy.” Behind a table cluttered with jeweler’s tools stood a stocky woman perhaps fifty years in age, whose coarse thatch of dark hair and coppery skin spoke of mixed Arkennlander and Varkevian blood. She wore clothes as black as her eyes, a jeweled scorpion amulet on a silver chain around her neck, and owned no name but
Avakra-dan
, the Varkevian word for the deadly brown-furred spiders that lurked in crevices in the dry canyons of the Bolthole Mountains. Not a mage, but as dangerous as her namesake just the same. “Shouldn’t you be off playing the fool in the mountains?”

How I wished I was. “I thought I’d branch out from courier jobs this year,” I said. “Now that I’m working solo.”

Avakra-dan grinned, displaying teeth stained indigo from chewing gavis beetles. Some streetsiders swore by the beetles, said they made the mind work faster. I’d tried one once, back in my days as a runner boy for Tavian’s gang. If my thoughts moved quicker, I sure hadn’t noticed, occupied as I was in scrubbing my tongue raw to clear the rank taste from my mouth.

“Ah, yes.” Avakra-dan’s eyes took on a cruel gleam. “I heard how that sly little partner of yours robbed you blind so she could play jenny-toy to a mage.”

Even after all these months, the memory of Jylla’s betrayal still stung like scorpion venom. I shrugged, carefully nonchalant. “Good riddance.”

“That’s the spirit,” Avakra-dan agreed. “A clever boy like you only needs the lesson once: love is for fools and marks. About time you started playing proper shadow games instead of mucking about with courier work. But tell me, if you’re working solo—who’s that skulking in my alley?”

“Client representative,” I said. “One I’d prefer to keep clear of streetsider business.”

“Clever and cautious, good.” Avakra-dan awarded me another indigo grin. “Come, tell Avakra-dan what you seek.”

I slid a paper from my shirt. On it was a sketch I’d made of the magic-blocking amulet Kiran had worn when he’d first fled Ninavel. I’d done my best to replicate the complex, whorled pattern of the silver, and written in the type and color of each gem.

“My client wants to find a charm to match this one,” I told her. Simon Levanian had said of Kiran’s amulet:
I have seen its like before
. Hopefully that meant the amulet now locked in an Alathian vault wasn’t the only one in existence. Kiran had told me the charm blocked his bond with Ruslan; and more, it had saved me from dying in the inferno of magic released in Simon’s backfired spell. If I could find an equivalent charm, I hoped it could prevent Kiran from dying along with Ruslan if their bond went as deep as I feared. Even if it couldn’t, I’d have plenty of other uses for a charm powerful enough to hide me from both Marten and Ruslan.

“Hah.” Avakra-dan’s brows rose as she studied the drawing. “A seven-stone charm?” She darted me a sharp glance. “I’d guess your old lover’s not the only one cozying up to a mage.”

I’d known she’d suspect a mage’s involvement. Most Ninavel-made charms were designed so an untalented owner could spark them with the right trigger word and a few drops of blood, but that trick only worked for lesser spells. Nobody but a mage could spark a charm as powerful as Kiran’s amulet, though once sparked, I knew from experience the amulet would work even if worn by someone untalented.

“Guess all you like,” I said. “I’m not gonna mouth off about my client’s business. Except to say he’ll know if the charm’s a fake, and he won’t be pleased. Can you get one?”

Avakra-dan smirked. “There’s no charm Avakra-dan can’t procure, boy. Only question is how long the search takes. The more coin you pay, the faster it goes. For a charm as unusual as this one…at least five hundred kenets deposit. Fee is refundable less ten percent if I fail.”

“Three hundred kenets, five percent, and a two-week time limit,” I countered. I didn’t need to devote the full thousand I’d gotten from Marten to my bid for Melly, but the more I had to offer Red Dal, the better.

“Two weeks!” Avakra-dan spat. “Perhaps you mistake me for one of Noshet’s guardians, able to call down miracles from the mountaintops…”

We settled down to bargaining in earnest. I got her to agree to a four-week time limit with a bonus if she found the charm sooner, but she demanded a fifteen percent failsafe. I didn’t much like that—she might decide to simply take the failsafe and forget the rest—but in the end I agreed, on the condition she throw in a boneshatter and a linked pair of twin-seek charms.

“Skimming off your client, eh?” Avakra-dan laughed, a gurgling chortle. “Knew you were clever. All right, boy, you have a deal. Long as you’re willing to sign a blood-mark contract. I don’t take procuring jobs without one. No exceptions.”

I’d known it when I walked in her door, but it didn’t help me like the idea any better. Blood-mark contracts were simple: we’d each stain a copy of the terms with a few drops of our blood. If either of us reneged on the contract, the offended party would have a blood sample in hand to key a deathdealing charm with. I didn’t intend to back out, but I sure as hell wasn’t comfortable with Avakra-dan holding a sample of my blood. Ruslan might not be able to use it, but his partner mage Lizaveta could. Still, what choice did I have? No serious procurer in the city did jobs without blood-marks.

“I’ll sign, if we return contracts the moment the job’s complete,” I said.

“Wouldn’t have it any other way.” She rooted around in the piles on her desk to produce two blank sheets of paper, a silver writing stylus, a pot of ink, and a copper needle.

As she wrote out the terms, I said, “With all this wardfire, and mages dying…you must be doing quite the business in defensive charms.”

“Best summer I’ve had in years.” Avakra-dan paused in her writing to open a jar full of squirming beetles and flick one into her mouth. I winced at the hard grind of her teeth on the shell. “So you needn’t fear I’ll turn tail and run from the city, like these weak-minded fools moaning over signs and omens.”

“What, have people seen more than just wardfire?” I kept my eyes on the contract, my tone mildly curious.

Avakra-dan finished one copy and started the second. “Wardfire’s enough to panic some. You know how southerners are, they wring their hands and yap about demons the instant anything unusual happens. But now word’s come that Benno’s best deathdealer got found in a pool of blood on a rooftop, gutted like a rock bear clawed him open. That’ll scare them proper, watch and see.”

Every nerve sprang to attention. “Shit,” I said. “Hadn’t heard that one. When?” Benno was top ganglord over in Julisi, the next district over from Acaltar.

Avakra-dan shrugged. “Couple days ago. Benno’s tried to keep it quiet, but no secret’s safe in this city. The rumors have half his men spook-eyed and slinking for the city gates. Can’t say I blame them, but here’s another lesson for you, boy: profit’s always best when times are worst. You can’t handle a little risk, you don’t deserve to get ahead.”

“Why get spooked over someone taking a knife to a deathdealer? That’s not exactly unheard of.” I wished I dared ask direct if the wounds matched the tales of the Ghorshaba, but I didn’t want to reveal anything that hadn’t yet come streetside. If she realized I was involved in the investigation, that might lead her straight down the path to selling my blood to Lizaveta.

“Rumors don’t stick to truth.” Avakra-dan slid the completed copies over to me. “I’ve heard ten different versions of the tale, each wilder than the last, until you’d think Shaikar himself had crawled out of his hells to slay the man.”

Oh yeah, Talm would salivate over this when I passed it on. “Where’d they find him?” The body wouldn’t remain, but I could maybe find someone who’d seen it firsthand.

Avakra-dan offered me a sly smirk. “Have a ghoulish streak, do you? Or perhaps you’re playing other games. For twenty kenets, I’ll tell you the very spot.”

I didn’t much like the hard glint of calculation in her eyes. I’d originally thought to show her the spell diagram I’d found in Kiran’s pack and ask for a consult, but now I shelved that idea. Risky enough to show her the drawing of his amulet. I didn’t want her seeing any further association between me and blood magic if I could help it.

“Curiosity’s not worth coin,” I said, scrutinizing the contracts. If rumors were spreading as fast as she said, I’d find out easily enough where the death had happened by listening to tavern talk in Julisi.

“Your loss.” Avakra-dan crunched another beetle.

I handed one copy back to her. She pricked a finger and let five fat drops of blood fall on the paper. I did the same with the second copy. As I watched the red stains spread, I prayed to Khalmet I wouldn’t regret it.

* * *

(Kiran)

Kiran slipped into the study, easing the door shut so as not to disturb Ruslan. His master sat frowning over a host of books spread open on his desk. Further piles of books balanced precariously around the desk’s edge alongside papers dark with notes and diagrams. Ruslan’s chestnut hair was tied back in a careless tail, and ink and charcoal smudged his fingers. Kiran had seen him like this before; when researching some esoteric area of magic or developing a new spell, Ruslan’s focus was intense, bordering on obsessive. His apprentices disrupted it at their peril.

But Ruslan had never forbidden them access to the plenitude of books housed in the study’s ordered ranks of bookshelves; he only demanded they be quiet about it. Kiran tiptoed across the patterned rug to a set of shelves containing treatises on the mental aspects of magic. Sharp silver light from magelights set in iron sconces illuminated even their deepest recesses. He traced a finger over the spines, scanning titles.

“Try the Lernis.”

Kiran winced and turned. Ruslan was watching him, half-twisted in his chair. To Kiran’s relief, no hint of anger showed in his eyes.

“The fourth section of the treatise contains a discussion of the effects of backlash energies upon the mind of a mage,” Ruslan said, with a little, knowing smile. “Though I fear you’ll find it confirms that when damage is severe, memories cannot be recovered.”

Kiran flushed. “I know I ought to take your word for it. But…I’ve lost so much. I can’t just accept those memories are gone, not without even trying to find if there’s some spell that might recover them.”

“I would be disappointed in any apprentice of mine who gave up before researching a problem,” Ruslan said. “A mage should never assume a solution is beyond reach. Though a mage must also have the wisdom to move on if a problem proves intractable.”

Kiran nodded, though his determination didn’t falter. There had to be some hint, some suggestion lurking in a book that would show him the path to regaining his memories. Ruslan’s talk of patience and moving on was all very well, but he couldn’t know the frustration of having years of life and knowledge vanish.

Ruslan bent back over his books. Kiran pulled the Lernis volume free and retreated to one of the padded chairs near the study door. He settled into comfortable pillows and opened the book to the section Ruslan had mentioned.

Lost in a dry but chilling analysis of mages whose minds had been shattered, he barely registered the sound of the study door opening. Lizaveta’s voice broke his concentration.

“I brought the Valsadd codices from my library.” She padded over to Ruslan’s desk, bearing an armful of thin, yellowed parchments. She set them down as gently as if they were spun glass. “Your description of the blurring of the
zhaveynikh
energies reminded me of a description one of their sages wrote of a Jularian adept at work.”

Ruslan eyed the parchments with keen interest. “Which sage?”

Lizaveta lifted one bare brown shoulder in a shrug. The motion rippled the floor-length folds of her violet and black dress, held clasped at her neck by a ring of silver. The dress’s open back exposed the curve of her spine from neck to waist, and the soft fabric clung to the swell of hip and breast in a way that left Kiran short of breath. A fragment of memory slipped past, of fingers gliding over his chest, a woman’s low, delighted laugh in his ear. His face heated. Had he and Lizaveta…? He remembered seeing her caress a teenage Mikail with possessive languor while Ruslan looked on, but Kiran had been too young then to think it much different than the affection she’d lavished on them both throughout their childhood. Perhaps he was only imagining the implications in hindsight. Though if he wasn’t…he swallowed, his gaze caught by the smooth perfection of her skin.