The Tainted City (31 page)

Kiran said, “That’s what this spell we’re preparing will do? Allow us to know his thoughts during the moments he killed these mages?” The idea was fascinating—thoughts and strong emotions changed
ikilhia
, yes, so Kiran could see how the shifting patterns of a person’s life energy might leave traces that could be read. But he couldn’t even imagine the complexity of a spell that could successfully isolate and enhance something so minuscule in effect.

Ruslan nodded. Mikail rolled a vial between his fingers. “If we’re focusing on the killer’s thoughts, why do we need samples from the other mages?”

Ruslan said, “Mental traces are faint, overlapping, and easily confused. But with samples of blood, body, and power from the dead mages, I can form enough of a template for their minds to exclude their traces from consideration, leaving only the thoughts of our quarry.”

He rested a hand on Mikail’s shoulder. “Go, now, the both of you. Lizaveta is on her way to help me complete the water duty. I want to see you back at home, your task completed, when I return. I am eager to work this
altavish
spell and see what information we can gain about our quarry.”

“Yes, Ruslan.” Kiran stood along with Mikail. Ruslan gave them a last nod and disappeared through the archway toward the spell chamber.

“We can split up,” Kiran suggested to Mikail. “I’ll search two of the houses, and you take the other two.”

“No.” Mikail glanced again at the barred door. “We should stay together. It’ll be faster to locate the right kind of charm in a workroom with both of us working as a team.”

Kiran smiled at him ruefully. “You mean, you’re a lot better at reading charms than I am.”

Mikail shrugged. “I didn’t say that, did I? Come on, little brother. Let’s get this done.”

* * *

(Dev)

I hurried down the causeway that spiraled through Reytani district’s lesser towers. It felt strange to walk alone after Talm dogging my heels for so long. When we left the Aiyalen Spire, Marten had wrangled permission from Edon to hang around in the courtyard outside the gate and cast some kind of spell, something to do with trying to track the killer through ripples in confluence currents. I’d balked when Marten told me the casting should only take a few hours. Hell if I’d sit around on my ass that long when I could be doing something useful, like hunting news of any missing Tainters at the dawn markets.

Marten had been reluctant to let me go, claiming he feared for my safety. Apparently all the Alathians were needed to cast the spell—in fact, Stevan and Talm had argued over whether or not all of them together were enough to pull it off—so Marten couldn’t spare one as a watchdog. All the better in my view, though I had to admit I felt a touch jumpy without a mage’s protection. I’d escaped Aiyalen’s courtyard by promising to return by midmorning and agreeing to wear a signaling charm that I suspected would let Marten track me far more easily than any find-me.

Sunlight spilled in a golden river along the towers, but the causeway was still in shadow. The gated courtyards I passed were full of desert roses whose profusion of pin-sized blooms hadn’t yet closed for the day, their sweet scent strong in the air.

A flash of blue caught my eye. I looked sideways into a narrow, gated archway, and stopped dead.

Jylla stood in the shadows, her back to me. She looked every inch the wealthy highsider, her dress made of layers of rich indigo fabric, her midnight black hair caught up in a gold clasp and jewels winking on the straps of her sandals, but I knew it was her. How could I not, when I’d spent long nights memorizing every curve and hollow of the lush body displayed to such advantage by that dress?

A black, bitter wave crashed over me. She’d betrayed me and stolen every kenet I’d earned in four years of mountain trips. If not for her, I never would have taken the smuggling job that had gotten me into this mess. Never crossed any Shaikar-damned blood mages, never gotten barred from outriding and courier work…yet that wasn’t what hurt the most. It was the other, older memories that cut so deep I thought my heart might fail in my chest. She’d dragged me out of despair after my Change, comforted me when I’d lain bruised and bloodied in Tavian’s cellar, schemed with me and laughed with me and shared her very soul with me…how could all that have been a lie?

Jylla’s back was tight with tension, one hand white-knuckled on the gate’s iron bars, the other hidden by her body. Even as I watched, the gate cracked open and she slipped through into the courtyard beyond. I glimpsed an amulet in the shape of a rayed sun clutched in one hand, before she moved out of my sightline.

I’d seen that amulet’s like before, and recently. Around the neck of a bloodied corpse in Aiyalen. How had Jylla gotten hold of it? And what was she doing, sneaking into some highsider’s house instead of lounging around in her lover’s garden?

The gate was still open, the wards dark. I fingered the signaling charm on my wrist. I could summon the Alathians. But if I did, I’d interrupt their spellwork. Stevan had warned Marten that the longer they waited to cast, the less chance the spell would have of tracing the killer. I wasn’t sure yet that Jylla’s amulet truly linked her to the deaths in Aiyalen. Maybe amulets like that were commonplace among highside mages.

Besides, Jylla wasn’t a mage. My boneshatter charm would work just fine for protection. And if I ended up confronting her, I’d far rather that conversation didn’t take place in front of Marten. The last thing I needed was for him to get yet more insight into how best to fuck me over.

I edged into the archway and peered through the gate. The courtyard beyond was empty of all but flowering karva vines and slender, ghost-pale ashblossom trees. In the far stone wall, a door stood slightly ajar, the wards as dark and silent as the gate’s.

I eased through the gate and cat-footed my way up to the door. Listening at the crack, I heard only silence. When I peeked through, I saw only stone walls cluttered with bone masks, knotwork tapestries, and jade sculptures. I slipped around the door, the rune-marked oval of the boneshatter charm gripped tight in my right palm.

“Thought you’d never come in.” Jylla stepped from the corner behind the door.

Oh, hell. I lunged for Jylla with the boneshatter charm. She skipped aside.

“Easy, Dev! I just want to talk.”

I halted, but kept my right hand raised and ready. “Why the game, then? You could’ve hailed me in the street.”

Her cheekbones and temples were painted with subtle, shimmering colors that made her pointed face look somehow softer, younger. Yet her sloe eyes still held the old, familiar glint of sardonic amusement. “Would you have stopped if I had?”

“Fuck, no,” I said. “I’m not staying, either. Not unless you tell me how you got that amulet you were waving around at the gate, and whose house you’ve lured me into.”

“Both amulet and house are mine,” she said. “Or rather, Naidar’s. My patron.”

Patron. Ha. Naidar was a swaggering asshole of a crystal mage who drooled over women of Korassian descent like Jylla. She’d hooked him good, and promptly stolen all my earnings so she could pull off the role of highside courtesan and keep him dancing to her tune.

An image of the mutilated corpse bearing the rayed amulet sprang into my mind’s eye. I’d only ever seen Naidar from afar, and the corpse’s face was ruined beyond recognition, the hair so matted with blood I wasn’t certain of the color. But damn, the height was right.

Best to be sure. “Where’s Naidar now?” I asked Jylla.

“Dead in the Aiyalen Spire,” Jylla said flatly. “As you well know. I saw you strolling in and out of the Spire with those foreign mages.”

“How did you know he’s dead? They haven’t let anyone else inside the…” My stomach sank. “Oh, shit. You were there? In the tower?”

Jylla nodded. “Naidar and his friends liked to take their lovers with them to the Spire when they took a water magic shift.” She gave a little, wry shrug at my incredulous look. “He liked to show off how important he was. Only mages are allowed in the inner spell chamber, but we’d gamble and talk a while in the waiting room, until it was time for their shift and they’d send us out to wait in the antechamber. When the screaming started, Alia went to pieces, but Lisel and Jory tried to get the doors open.” She shook her head, looking disgusted. “Suliyya knows what they thought they could do if they did. As for me—well, I’m not stupid.”

“You ran,” I said, bitterly amused. Of course she had. Jylla’s sense of self preservation was even better honed than Red Dal’s. “I bet you were down those stairs faster than a red-eared hare.”

She shrugged without a trace of regret. “Like I said, I’m not stupid. I’d heard the rumors—and if a mage can’t protect himself, well, I sure as hell won’t be able to help. I waited ’til the wardfire vanished, then found a spot to hide in the outer courtyard. I saw Sechaveh’s mages and the guardsmen come running, and heard them talking, after. That’s how I knew Naidar and his friends were dead.”

Her hands had locked tight around the sun amulet she still carried, though I saw no hint of grief in her eyes. She said, “I also saw the blood mage come, and tell the guards he wanted to question any witnesses.”

“Yeah, and by questioning them, Ruslan means mindburning them while they shriek their lungs out.” I had a moment of black satisfaction when she flinched.

Her painted eyes widened, imploring. “I feared as much. Then I saw you, talking with those mages like a born highsider. I knew you could help me.”

“
Help
you?” I spat at her feet. “Fuck, Jylla. After what you did, I ought to hand you straight to Ruslan and laugh. Why in Shaikar’s hells would I help?”

“Because I’ve got information related to Naidar’s death,” Jylla said. “You’re working for those foreigners, right? Don’t you want to get a jump on them, learn something you can use to bargain? Trust me, Dev, ordinary folk like us need every advantage we can get when playing games with mages.”

A dark voice within urged,
Give her to Ruslan. Let him mindburn her, make her pay.
I got a vivid image of Jylla, slumped and drooling blood like Torain—and winced, feeling sick. The gods knew I’d wanted her to suffer for her betrayal of me, but that…no. For all my harsh words to her, I wasn’t so vicious. Marten, I’d gladly watch die screaming, but Jylla…if she’d known about Melly when she took my earnings, then maybe. But I’d never told her, too intent on keeping the silence I’d promised Sethan.

Besides, she was right. I needed more to offer Marten. “Fine. You give me something worthwhile, I’ll see you don’t get mindburned.”

Jylla glanced down the corridor. “The servants will be back from the dawn markets soon, and I’d rather talk where they can’t overhear. My room’s warded, and I’ve got a quiet-shroud charm there, strong enough no one can listen in.”

I hesitated. She might still mean to set me up somehow, but I could understand wanting to keep this private. At the first sign of any trouble, I’d use my boneshatter charm on her and run. Warily, I followed her.

The inner rooms were almost a parody of my expectations of a highsider. Ornamentation everywhere, the walls covered in jewels and carvings, expensive cinnabar wood furniture from Alathia crowding every room. Jylla halted in front of an arched wooden door carved with elaborate geometric patterns. I winced as I eyed the garishly painted statues of leaping pronghorns framing the doorway. Samis probably would’ve pronounced them the height of art.

“Let me guess, Naidar wasn’t born a highsider,” I said to Jylla.

She pressed the rayed amulet against the tangle of ward lines circling the door handle. The ward flashed blue.

“Of course not.” Jylla pushed the door open. “None of the mages in Ninavel were born here.”

I paused in the doorway, surprised. “Mages can’t have kids, yeah, but some of them must get born here, right? To ordinary parents?” Everyone knew spellcasting made mages sterile, but I’d never heard Jylla’s claim before.

“I heard Naidar and one of his mage friends talking once about how all Ninavel mages are immigrants. Kids birthed here are never mageborn, only Tainted. Naidar said there’s some big natural reservoir of magic here, so powerful it burns out the minds of untrained mages—he thinks exposure to so much wild magic kills any potentially mageborn babies in the womb. He said that even older mageborn kids brought here from elsewhere can’t survive without special protective bindings until they’re past puberty.”

“Huh.” I’d known Kiran hadn’t been born in Ninavel, since he’d told me he’d never had even a hint of the Taint. I hadn’t realized that applied to every mage in the city.

Jylla’s room was huge by streetside standards, but relatively plainly decorated compared to the eye-searing circus outside. Silk drapes in soft shades of rose and lavender hid the stone of the walls and formed a canopy over the enormous bed. I sucked in a breath as I recognized the collection of little animals cut from quartz, amethyst, and malachite sitting on the inset stone shelf at the head of the bed. I’d given her most of those either as Naming day gifts or to celebrate our reunions after my mountain trips.

She probably kept them as a trophy of how skillfully she’d manipulated me. Or maybe I’d meant so little to her she’d never even thought to ditch them. My fists clenched, but I held my tongue. She was as clever as Marten; she’d seize any opening I gave her.

Jylla shut the door, reactivated the wards, and rooted around in a carved wooden chest beside the bed. After a moment, she made a small, pleased noise and stood up, dangling a jewel-studded silver amulet on a delicate chain from one finger. “Quiet-shroud charm,” she said, and slipped it on over her head, careful not to snag the chain on her hairclasp.

She approached to stand mere inches away. I backed, but she held up a warning hand. “It’s a powerful charm, but we need to stand close for it to cover you as well as me.”

I gritted my teeth and stared over her head as she slinked up to me again. “You seriously think we need a shroud charm? I saw those wards on the door.” Naidar might have been a gullible, insecure show-off, but he knew how to make wards. Even in my Tainted days, I would’ve had a hard time slipping past wards that strong.