The Tainted City (32 page)

“If anything, I’m not being cautious enough. Naidar’s magic didn’t save him in the Aiyalen Spire, and I’ve heard the rumors. Mages dying, Tainters vanishing…”

Startled, I looked her full in the face. “What do you know about missing Tainters?”

She shrugged. “A streetside friend came to me last week wanting names of mages who might be willing to make highside-strength protective wards sized small enough to be worn by kids. I was curious, so I did some asking around. The handlers have been keeping it quiet, but a bunch of Tainters have disappeared recently while they’re out on jobs, enough so handlers are demanding their ganglords do something about it.”

Melly. My gut twisted with new worry. I’d thought the killer might’ve snatched one kid to test Aiyalen’s wards, but I hadn’t imagined anything near so widespread. Why would he want so many?

“I assume you mean the kids aren’t just failing against wards.” One mistake Tainting a powerful ward meant death for a Taint thief. Any bodies found by the wards’ owners were usually dumped along with the rest of the house’s garbage. The muckboys who carted highside trash off to be burned in magefire kilns were happy to earn extra coin by showing handlers the corpses.

Jylla nodded. “No bodies, no activated wards…the kids go into a mark’s house and never come back.”

“How many have disappeared, and in which districts?” My feet itched to run go check Red Dal’s den right now, make sure Melly wasn’t among the missing. But if Melly hadn’t returned to the den after last night’s job, Cara would’ve heard about it from Liana by now, and signaled me. The twin-seek charm on my bicep remained cold and inert, just as it had been all morning.

Jylla shrugged again. “I don’t know exactly how many. I heard the handlers in Julisi are complaining the loudest, but it’s happened in Gitailan and Baroi districts as well.”

Julisi district again. Thank Suliyya she hadn’t said Acaltar, but my worry didn’t lessen.

Jylla said, “My point is, whoever’s out there is grabbing kids and murdering mages like their defensive charms are as useless as devil-wards. I’d say that justifies a healthy dose of caution.”

“Yeah,” I muttered. Disturbing as this was, apparently it wasn’t even Jylla’s real bit of news. “All right, Jylla. I came here like you wanted. What do you know related to Naidar’s death?”

She took a deep breath, and let it out, slowly. If I looked down, I’d have a great view of the honey-smooth swell of her breasts, held high and tight by that damn dress. Resolutely, I kept my eyes on her face and tried not to think of all the countless times we’d talked like this, planning out a job—and what had come after, when the talking was done.

Jylla said, “Over the last two days, someone was watching this house, and even shadowing Naidar. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that now Naidar is dead.”

“He didn’t notice someone stalking him? He was a mage, for Khalmet’s sake!”

She gave a small snort. “He was a mage, sure, but he was blind to his surroundings like any ordinary highsider. More so, maybe, because he didn’t think harm could touch him. When the wardfire started, he scoffed at the rumors. He said the mages who died were just too weak or dumb to protect themselves properly.”

Yeah, that sounded like the arrogant asshole I remembered. His arrogance wasn’t all hot air. We’d all heard the tales streetside of the ugly deaths suffered by those who crossed mages. A shadow man would have to be either desperate or cocky as hell to take a job scouting a mage. Unless…

“Was Naidar’s shadow a mage, too?”

Jylla shook her head. “No sigils on his clothes, but more than that, he didn’t move like a mage. Not even a hint of arrogance. I’m pretty sure he was streetside. Oh, he blended in highside well enough, dressed the part and all…but he had quick eyes.”

“Yeah, and maybe he had nothing to do with Naidar’s death,” I said skeptically.

Jylla’s mouth quirked. “Because mages get shadowed every day in Ninavel. Besides, I’m betting your mage friends could use a lead.”

True. If Marten’s spell didn’t work, the Alathians would be desperate for something to go on. “What did he look like?”

Jylla’s eyes took on a cunning gleam. “Ah, now that’s a good question. Tell me, Dev, what would your mage friends give in return for that information?”

I’d been waiting all along for something like this. Jylla never gave anything away for free. “Protection from Ruslan isn’t enough for you? Blood mages don’t need to barter, Jylla, they just take. Ruslan will rip the shadow man’s image straight out of your head.”

She changed tactics without even blinking. “What about you? What would you give?”

“Fuck if I’ll give you a single kenet after all you stole from me.” Pain surged, sudden and vicious, sending words pouring from me like blood from a wound. “Besides, nobody can give you what you really want. Not me, not even whatever Khalmet-touched fool of a mage you get your claws into next.”

“You think so? Then tell me, what do I really want?” Jylla’s smile was kitfox-sharp.

I bared my teeth in a knowing grin. “Nothing ever replaces the Taint, does it? You think it matters that you’re highside now, acting the jenny-slave to a bunch of puffed up mages? You’re still a cripple with that fucking hole inside where the Taint used to be, dead as the southern blight. How does it feel, watching them cast magic when you’ll never taste it again?”

Her smile vanished as if I’d slapped her. For an instant her eyes went wide and unguarded, the pain in them an echo of my own.

“We know each other too well, don’t we, Dev?” Her voice was lightly mocking, but I recognized the bitter undertone and knew the mockery wasn’t all directed at me. She slid closer until her lithe body pressed right up against mine. I didn’t back away. She was trying to get control of the conversation again, and I didn’t mean to let her.

“Tell you what, Tainter,” she said. “I’ll describe that shadow man for you, down to the length of his eyelashes—in exchange for one, simple thing.”

“Yeah? And what is this ‘one, simple thing?’” I sneered.

“Something I’ve missed this summer,” she said, the bitter undertone still in her voice. Quick as an adder’s strike, she wound her hands in my hair and tugged my mouth down to hers.

She wanted to unsettle me? I’d show her it wasn’t so easy. I returned her kiss. Deepened it into something hard and hungry, and skimmed my fingers along the exposed skin of her back where her dress dipped low.

She made a small, low sound that jolted straight to my groin. Her hands slid down over my arms to slip beneath my shirt. I caught her wrists, pulled them behind her back—damn it, I wasn’t such a fool as to let her search me. She gasped and rocked her hips against mine, her tongue doing truly wicked things in my mouth, and I found myself backing her toward the bed. I should shove her away, laugh in her face, but it had been so long, her body still a perfect fit against mine, and I knew just where a touch would make her shiver…

The creak of the door opening broke through the haze in my head. I leaped away from Jylla, one hand snatching for the boneshatter charm in my belt. She’d set me up after all, Shaikar take her, and I’d fallen right into her honey-trap—

I checked so hard I nearly fell flat on my face. The intruder wasn’t some streetside thug or sneering highsider. It was Kiran.

Chapter Fourteen

(Kiran)

“W
hat are you doing here?” Kiran blurted, one hand still raised and his mind entangled with the energies of the door wards he’d just broken.

Dev’s mouth opened, but nothing came out. He cleared his throat. “Marten—Captain Martennan, I mean—asked me to interview Naidar’s associates.”

Kiran damped out the last of the ward energies and focused more closely on Dev and his companion. Amusement displaced confusion as he registered the flush on the woman’s cheeks and the abnormally rapid flicker of both her and Dev’s
ikilhia
. Clearly Dev’s method of questioning was far kinder than Ruslan’s. “She’s one of his…associates, I take it?”

A courtesan, more specifically, if the enormous bed and the elegant artifice of the woman’s appearance were any guide. Kiran had read in books that some lesser mages took
nathahlen
as lovers. Ruslan viewed the practice with utter contempt. Kiran had to admit he didn’t see how a mere physical encounter could compare to the depth of union he’d experienced with Ruslan and Lizaveta.

“Associate, yeah. Unfortunately, she doesn’t know anything.” Dev peered warily at the open door behind Kiran. “Is Ruslan here too?”

He must hope to avoid subjecting the courtesan to Ruslan’s version of interrogation. Kiran couldn’t blame him.

“No,” Kiran said. “He sent me and Mikail to…examine the dead mages’ workrooms.” If Dev asked for specifics beyond that, he would refuse to give them. Kiran knew Ruslan’s dismissal of the Alathians before explaining the spell he hoped to cast was no coincidence. Kiran already risked Ruslan’s anger in speaking to Dev again—but so far, he thought the conversation easily defensible. Ruslan would want to know what a representative of the Alathians sought in the murdered mage’s house, after all.

“This isn’t the workroom,” Dev said, with a lift of a brow.

“Mikail’s there already,” Kiran said. “I sensed the active wards here, so I came to check…” He trailed off, not wanting to reveal he’d been looking for newly-made charms. He’d thought perhaps the wards protected a secondary workroom. Some mages preferred to keep a separate area devoted solely to charm creation.

Instead, he now had an excellent opportunity to speak to Dev unobserved by either Mikail or Ruslan. He badly wanted to discover the truth behind the oddity of Dev’s reactions to him and Mikail. Yet fear of Ruslan’s wrath and the presence of the
nathahlen
courtesan combined to leave him tongue-tied, unable to think of a properly innocuous question that would coax Dev into revealing what Kiran wanted to know.

He settled for a foray on a lesser matter. “How do you know her?” he asked Dev, indicating the courtesan. Even aside from what Kiran’s entry had obviously interrupted, Dev’s repeated glances at her, and the way he’d edged in front of her, as if to block Kiran’s view, had Kiran convinced she was more than some newly-met witness. He wanted to know what tie a lower-city man could have to a wealthy mage’s courtesan—and if Dev lied and claimed they’d only just met, that would be instructive, too.

“We used to work for the same man. A long time ago.” Dev said it casually enough, but this time his glance at the courtesan was dark. The courtesan kept her eyes downcast, as she had ever since her first sight of the sigils on Kiran’s clothes, and stayed silent.

If Dev spoke the truth about a shared employer, it couldn’t be that long ago. Both Dev and the courtesan looked to be close in age to Mikail, only a few years older than Kiran. But if Dev had once worked for someone in the upper city, another mage perhaps…that might explain some of his unusual ease around mages.

Before Kiran could press for more details, Dev went on. “If you’re looking for something here in the house, maybe I can help.”

Kiran hesitated, torn once more between curiosity and worry. He couldn’t risk revealing what he and Mikail sought here. But how could he squander the chance to question Dev further?

“Have you learned anything of interest?” If Dev had even a hint of relevant information, Ruslan couldn’t fault Kiran for continuing the conversation.

“Actually, yeah. I’ve something to share. Why don’t you and I head toward that workroom?” Dev gave Kiran a pointed look, tilting his head toward the courtesan. She raised her eyes to give Dev a sharp, quizzical glance.

Kiran’s curiosity burned hotter yet. “Very well,” he said coolly, as if he weren’t equally eager to speak in private. He turned to the door, and heard Dev mutter something swift and fierce to the courtesan. He wondered with a flash of dark amusement if Dev’s motive in wanting a private conversation was simply to get Kiran away from her. A sudden, irrational urge to assure Dev he wouldn’t hurt the woman swept him. Kiran shook it off, as Ruslan spoke sternly in his memory:
A mage cannot afford to show weakness, especially in front of
nathahlen.

Once out in the hallway, he waited as Dev shut the bedroom door. The hinges creaked, and at the far end of the hall, an older woman in the dress of a house servant peeked around the corner of the kitchen archway. Her face paled at the sight of Kiran’s sigils, and she hurriedly ducked back within.

“What have you learned?” Kiran asked Dev.

Dev didn’t speak, only jerked his head in the direction of the hallway. Bemused, Kiran followed him as he strode past the kitchen. It wasn’t until they rounded a corner that Dev stopped. He glanced around, as if checking for witnesses.

“I want to show you something.” He unfolded a piece of parchment and handed it to Kiran.

Surprise stopped Kiran’s breath. The parchment held the inked lines of a channel diagram, and one for an incredibly complex spell at that. “This…where did you get this?”

“It’s a spell diagram, right? For what you call a channeled spell?”

Kiran couldn’t take his eyes from the diagram. He didn’t know the pattern, and yet something about it nagged at him. “In a way. It’s for a charm,” he said absently. He leaned forward to study the diagram more closely. The inward-spiraling channels would focus the magic back upon the wearer, but not in the manner of a protective charm…He frowned, as the lines he followed ended abruptly.

“It’s unfinished,” he said, startled into looking up at Dev.

“Yeah, I figured,” Dev said. “What does it do?” He sounded frustrated. Kiran could appreciate the feeling. Mikail could probably divine the charm’s purpose from a brief look at the diagram, unfinished or not. Whereas Kiran always had to work through the entire pattern, and read all the notations. Thinking of that, he focused on the symbols inked beside the charm’s outermost pattern layer.

Shock rippled through him. “Where did you get this?” Kiran demanded, harshly enough that Dev backed a pace.

“Someone gave it to me. Look, my name’s on it, in the same ink.” Dev turned the parchment over. Sure enough, his name was written in small letters below one of the creases. Kiran rubbed at his eyes in disbelief.