The Tainted City (50 page)

Was the weight on my chest growing heavier? Visions of rock inexorably crushing me into paste had me panting all over again, panic creeping upward.
No.
Focus.

“How long, since…?”

“Some hours. Though…time stretches, in darkness.”

Hours, and nobody had cast to get us out. I remembered Talm watching the rocks rain down on us without lifting a hand. I’d warned Cara we couldn’t rule him out as a traitor, but still…I’d swear his love for Marten was real. What hatred did he carry that outweighed it?

Didn’t matter. If the lying bastard had told Marten we were dead, maybe even cast one of those veiling spells to make sure nobody could easily seek us….shit. I still wore the signaling charm on my left wrist, but with my arm trapped I had no way to tap out the damn pattern.

I said to Pello, “If you work for the bastard responsible for these quakes, I’m guessing he’s got better things to do than dig you out.”

Pello laughed again, this time with a wild, hard edge. “I have two masters, and neither will save me. I knew the moment I saw you on that stair that I’d outlived my usefulness and death was coming for me.”

“Who are your masters?” I might not survive to use the information, but so long as Pello kept talking, I didn’t have to think about the pressure on my chest, the weight of rubble slowly sinking down.

“You guessed one,” Pello said. “The Shaikar-spawn who seeks to destroy the city. But it was your Lieutenant Talmaddis who gave me over to him and told him how to leash me.”

Surprise sent my voice high. “Talmaddis is working directly with the mage-killer?” I’d assumed he and any co-conspirators were simply hoping to take advantage of the situation. Impede Marten’s investigation enough so he’d fail to stop the killer from destroying both confluence and city, and leave Alathia free of the so-called plague den on its border.

“For at least these last few months. Perhaps longer,” Pello said. “Talmaddis hunted me down before I could cross the Alathian border. He concealed me from the others in his Watch, telling me he had a friend with a use for a Ninavel shadow man. I went along with him, thinking if I could only reach Ninavel again, I’d soon gain my freedom. The more fool, me.”

The echo of my own experience brought a stab of uncomfortable sympathy. “What of the other Alathians at the embassy? Are any of them involved?”

“Not that I’ve seen,” Pello said. “But that proves little. Talmaddis may well have partners in this madness—whether willing, or coerced as I was.”

I thought again of the darkness in Lena’s eyes. If she was working with Talm, might it be unwillingly? But I didn’t buy for a minute that Pello had been forced into this.

“Coerced? Right,” I sneered. “How much coin did you get to betray Sechaveh?”

Pello said, “Talmaddis knew coin wouldn’t guarantee loyalty. He searched my mind, again and again until he broke through the veils Sechaveh’s mages had set in me, and he found the collar to leash me. I have…a son. A child of nine years. His mother is long dead—she, too, played shadow games. I sent my son years ago to a distant cousin in Prosul Varkevia, thinking that would protect him. Talmaddis told the mage-killer of this when he handed me over.”

I had to remember how readily he lied. “The killer threatened a kid who lives way down in southern Varkevia, and you rolled right over?”

“Says the man who’d crawl through magefire for a child that isn’t even his,” Pello said, with a cracked chuckle. “He did more than threaten. He can travel like demons in the tales, appearing in the blink of any eye wherever he chooses…though I learned he can only stay a short time before he must return to the source of his power. He went to Prosul Varkevia and kidnapped my son, even now holds him prisoner. To prove his power, he killed my cousin. And when he caught me seeking ways to counter his magic, he killed my closest friend.”

“Who the hell
is
this murdering bastard?” I demanded.

“I wish I had his name, so I might curse his soul properly…” Pello coughed, harsh and dry. My own throat burned. Gods, what I wouldn’t give for some water.

“I know you,” I said. “All you’d need is five sentences from him to learn far more than his name.”
Keep talking
, I willed him.

Pello said, “I saw him only twice, and he wore a
gabeshal
robe, only his eyes showing. But I know this: the robe is not mere disguise. He is Kaithan-born, though his accent is so faded I think it years since he last lived in the tribelands. He once lived in Ninavel, though he does not now. And how he hates the city! But he would not tell me what spawned that hate, no matter how I pricked him. I did not have much chance. After our first meeting, he contacted me only by message charm…except when he found I’d defied him. Then he came, and made me watch Nayyis die.”

Khalmet’s bloodsoaked hand. The stone seemed to press all the harder on my chest. “What did he need you for?”

“I scouted wards, reported the movements of certain mages…but my main task was to discover when and where Tainters would be working jobs.”

“So he can snatch them,” I said. “Why does he want the kids?”

Pello spat and said, huskier than ever, “He uses the children somehow to fuel his magic…I never saw what he does. But they do not survive it. I saw a room of bones, so small and white, clean of flesh as if it was burned away in magefire…”

Bile soured my throat. “How could you keep handing kids over?”

“You sound so horrified, so righteous,” Pello said. “I have done worse in Sechaveh’s service, and for less reason. You have the steel in you to do the same. Look at the choices you’ve made for young Melly’s sake.”

I flinched, remembering handing Kiran drugged and helpless to Gerran; of how even now I worked for Marten, despite all his betrayals. “This source of power you say the killer’s got to return to…where is it?”

Pello groaned. “Ah, how I struggled to find out! He took me there to show me my son and my murdered cousin, but we traveled in demon-fashion, the journey done in an eyeblink. I think it is not in the city. The air was chill, as it is in the high mountains or the far north. I saw no windows, and the rooms were of rough stone, so rough I thought them hollowed by magic from natural rock, not built. The rock itself was far darker than any stone I’ve seen in Ninavel, though streaked with veins of rose quartz. I searched scholars’ records and explorers’ journals for locations where such rock might be found…but learned to my sorrow there are far too many possibilities, both in the Whitefires and elsewhere.” He broke into more hitching, strained coughs.

There had to be some better use a mage could make of his information. “If we can get free and contact Captain Martennan…maybe Talmaddis isn’t the only Alathian working with the killer, but I’m dead sure Marten’s not part of this. If you share all you know, he can find this bastard’s den and save your son.”

“I fear my son’s life is already forfeit,” Pello said. “This…this is what comes of attachment. I knew it, and yet I could not burn it out of myself…and now, look. My son is dead regardless, and I, too, will feel Shaikar’s touch…”

The slow, almost dreamy sound of his words alarmed me. “How badly are you hurt?”

“Badly enough. I have not an outrider’s luck.”

The maddeningly steady plinking took on a sinister new aspect. “You’re bleeding out? I’ve a charm that might work to signal—”

“If you signal the Alathians, we are both dead men.” Pello’s voice strengthened. “The only thing saving you now is the shrouding charm I wear, strong enough to cover us both. Talmaddis cannot sense if we live. And so, he will tell the rest that we lie dead, all the while watching for any signal from you that might force him to ensure it. He knows if he waits long enough, we die in truth without him risking a single spell to accomplish it.”

“It wasn’t the Alathians I was going to signal.” The charm Kiran had modified for me circled my right wrist. I didn’t know if the charm would work if I sparked it, not him. But hell, I had to try.

“Talmaddis may feel the magic anyway.”

“I have to risk it.” I lifted my right arm, scraped my wrist against stone until blood ran slick over Kiran’s charm. “
Ashantya
,” I whispered, and concentrated with everything within me.

Chapter Twenty

(Kiran)

“T
ell me why I should not bar you from the confluence here and now, Ruslan!” Sechaveh stabbed a finger down at the warded sea of blue-violet flame before his great stone chair. “When you said I should seek shelter, you said nothing of blasting an entire district into ash! Ninavel’s largest smelting houses destroyed, my workforce on the verge of rioting, the mines’ production stalled…and you say my enemy is still at large? I say you have done far more to ruin my city than he has yet managed!”

Kiran hid a wince. He and Mikail waited by the audience chamber windows, well clear of Ruslan. Their master faced Sechaveh and Captain Martennan over the confluence charm’s obsidian rings, his arms crossed tight. Lizaveta stood at his side, elegant and imperious. Ruslan’s face was as severe and still as a statue’s, but his hazel eyes burned.

He said, “I have caused no damage that cannot be repaired. Let the merchant houses flee, let the mines go fallow for lack of workers…the merchants will come crawling back sniffing after profit soon enough, and your coffers will once more overflow.”

Lizaveta added in a tone of quiet reason, “Even a failed strike bought us more time, by driving away our enemy before he could deepen the confluence’s instability.”

Captain Martennan’s drawling voice echoed off the marble walls. “Time bought at far too high a price! Lord Sechaveh, not only did Ruslan’s ill-considered strike cost me one of my own people, a man whose efforts have proved invaluable to this investigation—but he destroyed our best lead! The spy Pello could well have led us to the killer. Thanks to Ruslan, that chance is gone.”

Ruslan glared at Martennan. “Your pursuit of the spy was a thin gamble at best. You yourself admit you do not know if he worked for the killer. As for your man…” The fire in his eyes brightened, turned vindictive. “You refer merely to your hired informant, do you not? He was Arkennlander, and
nathahlen
—hardly one of your own people. Hire another of the lower city’s rabble if you choose to seek information there; I see no reason for sorrow.”

Martennan’s mouth twisted. Unaccountably, he glanced at Kiran. Kiran kept his face stolidly blank. Martennan must know of Dev’s attempt to turn him against Ruslan. Did he hope the news of Dev’s death would leave Kiran newly desperate for answers about his past, making him all the more vulnerable to coercion? If so, Kiran would show him how wrong he was.

Kiran only wished he could rejoice in Dev’s death the way Ruslan so clearly did. Dev had betrayed him, tried to suborn him, and Kiran had wanted revenge. Yet between the tension in the audience chamber and his lingering dismay over the failed strike, he couldn’t muster even a glimmer of satisfaction.

“I see plenty of reason for sorrow in your failure, Ruslan.” Sechaveh’s yellow eyes were lambent with anger. “We cannot afford any more such mistakes. I should ensure you cannot cast a channeled spell again without my approval.”

Ruslan’s
ikilhia
flared, power rippling out to stain the aether around him. Kiran caught Mikail’s eye, saw his mage-brother’s worry, twin to his own. Ruslan wouldn’t be so foolish as to cast directly against Sechaveh or Martennan in violation of his vows, but his temper might drive him to some other casting nearly as ruinous in effect.

Lizaveta set her fingers lightly on Ruslan’s wrist. Her beautiful face remained grave, giving no hint of what might be passing between them, but the power pulsing from Ruslan’s
ikilhia
subsided.

He said sharply to Sechaveh, “You cannot
afford
to hobble me, or waste time in futile recrimination. Save your anger for our enemy! A failure still gives us information, and we must use it to plan our next attack…” He launched into an explanation of Kiran’s theory about their enemy’s sensitivity to channeled spellwork.

Kiran let out a relieved breath and glanced away. The view from the chamber windows remained ominous. The morning’s massive thunderstorm had moved out eastward, leaving behind an eerily russet sky, the afternoon light dim and strange. Smoke still curled up from the charred remains of Julisi district. Beyond the city walls, pale dust vortices taller than the city spires whipped across the alkali flats. Lightning flickered over the Bolthole Mountains from clouds as black as obsidian. The confluence twisted in sullen, unsettled spirals, the aether still rippling with dissonant energies.

A whisper teased at Kiran’s senses. He stiffened. Was their enemy returning so soon? But no, the whisper was deep within his barriers, not outside them, and so faint he could barely discern it. Puzzled, he concentrated.

Kiran. Kiran! Mother of maidens, let this work, let him hear me…

Dev? Shock stopped Kiran’s breath. Before he could think, he sent,
The Alathians claimed you were dead!

A thin echo of stunned relief came.
Kiran! Oh, thank Khalmet…I’m trapped under rubble, and not alone—with me is a shadow man who knows much of the killer. You’ve got to get us free! But come alone, and don’t tell anybody else we survived…One of the Alathians is working with the mage-killer.

Kiran’s heart pounded. Information on the killer within reach, and the chance to condemn one or more of the Alathians—the news was almost too good to be true. He had to be wary.
Come alone…
this could be some new scheme of the Alathians. Or what if Dev were the traitor? Mikail had said Dev sought only his own profit—such a man could easily switch sides. Dev might think to lure Kiran out alone so the killer could try some new scheme to strike an
akheli
down.

He said to Dev,
What proof do I have this isn’t more of your lies? Mikail told me the truth you tried to hide. You betrayed me into Alathian hands. It’s thanks to you they bound me so deeply Ruslan could not free me without damage.

Mikail said what?
Abject horror flooded through the link.
Oh gods, Kiran! You told him what you learned from Bren? No, no, oh mother of maidens, Melly…