Valkwitch (The Valkwitch Saga Book 1) (27 page)

They bid each other a good night and Tyrissa made
her way out of the inn. The same receptionist worked the front desk and shot
her the same dirty look but Tyrissa barely noticed, buoyed as she was by the
relief of having another hand in her search.

Summer Crime Spree Continues!

The resurgence of organized criminal activity
continued in the early hours of Amberfields seventeenth when a band of thieves
raided a warehouse owned by the Rift Trade Company. The security on duty
responded to curious sounds from multiple entrances that were soon followed by
bursts of elchemical smoke that prevented any accurate accounting of the assailants.
The warehouse’s security detail was quickly overwhelmed, bound, and blinded, though
no serious injuries were inflicted. The guards have said that the thieves were
highly organized and mostly silent as they uncovered and cracked the
warehouse’s underground vault. Investigators the next morning found that the
locks of both the entrance and the vault were melted off and considerable
elchemical residue remained at the site, evidence that aligns with the methods
of previous robberies and break-ins across the city.

Further clouding the case is motive, as the
Rift Company has said that nothing of importance was currently stored in the
vault, and nothing was taken from the warehouse. ‘Whatever they were looking
for, they didn’t find here,’ said Zaria Hessen, a spokeswoman for the Rift
Trade Company.

When asked for comment on this latest
elchemically aided break-in, a spokesman for the Concordium stated ‘It is clear
we’re dealing with a rogue elchemist operating outside the regulations and
oversight of the Concord and Central Admin.’ The Concordium has repeated that
none of its elchemists or vendors are involved with the recent crime spree, and
that they have fully cooperated with Central’s investigations. Central
Administration has increased the reward for viable information on the
resurgence of The Thieves Guild to one hundred and fifty gilders, double if it leads
to the arrest of a member of the ever-elusive cabal.

Tyrissa set the archival print of
The Times of
Khalanheim
from Amberfields eighteenth aside with a sigh. She was back in
the archives under the library, in the old military storeroom that had all the
comfort of a dungeon with the door left open. To one side lay a notepad, thick
with notations and ideas and theories. To the other stood the oil burning
lantern, her loyal companion in the dusty depths of the library. Between the
two lay a dozen archive issues spread out around her in a half-circle of
frustration.

She wasn’t even sure what she sought. From what
she saw during the attack at Khalan Southwest’s party, Vralin clearly had a
connection to the Thieves Guild. That incident was merely the boldest of a steady
stream of hits throughout the summer and into the autumn, many aided by
elchemy. It wasn’t much of a leap to peg Vralin as the ‘rogue elchemist’ that
the Concordium insisted was behind the well-equipped raids. He even wore the
flasks and vials of the profession when he and Tsellien came through Edgewatch.

The reporting was scattershot, sometimes
specific, other times vague to the point of useless. Tyrissa assumed many
companies didn’t want so many details known. Aside from the attack that she
personally witnessed at Southwest’s party, the papers relegated the continuing
exploits of the Thieves to the later pages of their daily editions. The targets
appeared to lack a clear pattern and occasionally even an objective, as in that
last article. Tyrissa lifted her notes and flipped to a page with a list of business
and properties that have been hit. They were mostly smaller guilds with vague
names like Riftside Supply, Dawn to Dusk Storage, or Khalan Foundational. She
would have to ask Liran to take a look, see if he recognized any of the names.
A long list of dates ran down one side of the page, noting the articles of
interest for this mad little project.

Figuring that that was enough for today, Tyrissa
stood, stretched, and set to work replacing the archives in their proper places
on the shelves. She felt that the Thieves were building to something big, but she
was running to catch up and at this rate she’d find out when everyone else did.
It was a web that she only see half of, but entangled her all the same. The
question was where Vralin fit in to it all. Was he the spider, or was he
somehow caught up in the web, as she was?

Tyrissa was getting used to emerging from the
library to see that evening had snuck up on her. The hours vanished into thin
air while she was in that building. As she crossed the central courtyard to the
south entrance of the university grounds, she saw that the construction crews
were gone from the base of the observatory tower, their work complete. Light
shone through windows on each floor of the tower when they normally would be
darkened by now. Strange. Tyrissa paused among the hedges, noticing that now
two Talons guarded the main doors. In the gloom of evening, she could see additional
pairs of Talons patrolling the gardens, stopping to note entrances to the various
university buildings in the central grounds. Tyrissa had made similar rounds on
her own assignments with the Cadre and the layout of the university sprang to
mind almost on instinct. There were three main entrances at the south, east,
and west, but a handful of smaller side entrances were scattered along the
outer walls. The old fortress towers at each corner of the outer walls made
excellent vantage points, but seemed to be inaccessible. Tyrissa had poked
around and looked in the tunnels below herself, though not extensively. She did
not envy the Talons on this job. Running security on this place wouldn’t be
easy.

The timing was odd. The exhibit didn’t open for
another week or so. Why so much security now? Tyrissa couldn’t recall seeing
this much during construction. She filed it away as a mental note. The Thieves
had a grudge against the Talons, as they made clear in the attack at
Southwest’s guildhall. With this many Talons assigned to one job they could
become a target. It felt like grasping at straws, a desire fueled by hours
spent sifting through newspaper reports to make any kind of connection.

Tyrissa left through the south entrance and began
the descent into the streets of Crossing and towards home.

Away from the late bustle of the main
thoroughfares the streets of Northeast Crossing were still and peaceful in the
evening. Try as she might, Tyrissa couldn’t see the fears of her clients and
the newspaper reports in the streets of Khalanheim by night. She had no fear of
the dark here. Thanks to the Cadre, she saw the different corners and angles of
the city by night as often as by day. She couldn’t help but feel secure in the
sense of ownership of the alleyways around her new home.

Her mind tugged her attention upward, the Pact
giving her a warning of nearby magicks. Rapid, approaching footfalls sounded
down from the rooftops, and Tyrissa felt a chill run through her that had
nothing to do with the cool evening. Fire. She kept walking, feeling exposed
without her staff and moving one hand inside her coat to check for her knife. Well,
Karine’s
knife, though Tyrissa had taken to wearing it instead of her
own almost immediately. It made a better side arm and the presence of the
winged shield emblem on it brought a certain comfort.

A wash of orange light bathed the alleyway as a
slim figure dropped to the ground ahead of her, an echo of a diving emberhawk.
She landed with a crisp grace, a ring of fire burst out from her feet,
consuming scraps of debris before dying out. She stood, flames flicking along
her arms and shoulders like a shawl. It was the fire juggler from the Harvest
market, and like an emberhawk she was thin and skeletal, even worse off than
when Tyrissa first saw her.

No fear of the dark, no fear of the flames.
Tyrissa
walked closer, trusting in her Pact and experience with the creatures of the
Vordeum Wastes. Her bones turned to ice once again, the sensation cresting when
she came within arm’s reach of the Fireweaver. The flames winked out from her
bare arms, and she took a step back. Tyrissa stopped, remembering the raw fear
the girl showed the last time their paths crossed.

“Are you Her replacement?” she asked.

Karine. The Pact Witch. Of course she would know
about her. She probably lived in fear of being hunted like the other slain
Pactbound. How did this girl know Karine was gone?

“Who’s replacement?” Tyrissa replied, hoping to
coax out more details.

“
You know
. The Witch. The Huntress.” She
avoided eye contact, only meeting Tyrissa’s gaze in quick flickers, like
glancing at the sun.

“No. I’ve been looking for her.”

The girl shook her head, the motions jerky. “She’s
gone, and you’re here now.”

“Yeah,” Tyrissa said bitterly. “She’s gone. What’s
your name?”

She coughed out a rueful laugh. “Just call me
Ash. It’s been good enough.”

When Ash spoke, Tyrissa could see that her teeth
were stained the color of dried blood and curls of smoke followed her breath into
air. When silent, she chewed on something on one side of her mouth.

“I’m Tyrissa. I’m not her replacement, but you
could say we’re the same.”

“No,” Ash said, shaking her head, eyes shut tight
for a moment. “Not the same. She used to come find me. Once a week. She could calm
them, soothed their anger and quiet their demands of me.” Ash held her left
hand out and five candle-size flames sparked to life at the tips of her spread
fingers.

“With you, all they do is rage. You’re not the
same.” She clenched her outstretched hand into a fist and it burst aflame,
flaring from orange to a searing blue. Tyrissa felt the frost coursing through
her bones respond in kind, deepening to a glacial well. Tyrissa clenched her
teeth, trying to fight it down and maintain control like she somehow did in the
underground. She didn’t need a repeat of the caravan. Not now.

The chill inside Tyrissa had demands of its own,
an urge that she should reach out and
end
this girl. It’s desires became
Tyrissa’s own. She wanted to end Ash’s pain, even if she didn’t know how.

Ash let the fire wreathed about her fist die away
and said, “She told me I wasn’t a danger. Has that changed?” Ash turned her
head aside and spat bright red glob onto the cobblestones. It smoked for a
moment before cooling into the color of rust, of Ash’s teeth.

Pity checked the unwelcome sense of wrath. Ash
was about her age, but looked as if the Pact she bore had brought her to the
precipice of ruin. Tyrissa struggled for words while trying to suppress the pleading
sensation from the ice in her bones that wanted nothing more than release.

“You’re only a danger to yourself,” Tyrissa lied.
It was all she could think of.

Seemingly satisfied with Tyrissa’s non-answer, Ash
nodded. “If only it were up to me alone. The Flames scream otherwise.” Ash
turned and burst alight once again and ran down the alley, quicker than the
fastest sprinter. She soon passed out of sight, flying across the cobblestones
on wings of flame.

Tyrissa stood in place afterword and tried to affect
the elemental power surging through her bones. It was different from Earth, a
constant flow that dispersed through her instead of a weighty reserve. She
tried to concentrate and will it to do something, anything, but the frosty
presence simply flowed away from her. After a few minutes she gave up and let the
ice in her bones thaw away on its own.

She resumed her walk home, now with renewed worries
on her mind. She had to start finding answers soon, before she shared in Ash’s
fate: lost and near ruin. She had to find Vralin.

By day, the air in the Mill district was thick
with the scent of baking bread, lingering through the riftwinds and smothering the
underlying scents of the city. Tyrissa walked along Baker’s Row, a broad road
that paralleled the Rift with rows of windmills to one side and a long chain of
bakeries on the other. The mills turned endlessly in the riftwinds, many built
on the very edge of the cliff with only thin links of wire fences separating
the flow of street traffic from the precipitous drop. At the junction of
Baker’s Row and the broad avenue that ran up the hill to the university was a
grand half-circle plaza. A swarm of vendor carts would gather here in the
pre-dawn light before carrying their goods off to every corner of the city,
though this late in the morning the plaza was largely empty.

Tyrissa came here this morning under somber slate
skies for a pair of loaves to restock Liran’s spotty stores, though succumbed
quickly to the constant stream of temptations along the street, buying a pair
of honey caked pastries. They were but one sample of hundreds available in the
plaza alone and if the Khalans had a second true love after coin, it was baked
goods. She quickened her pace on the way home to escape further temptations. Tyrissa
passed a newsstand near the nebulous boundary between Mill and Bridge, a little
booth between shops that blended into the background of the city. Both daily
papers were prominently displayed, today’s headlines catching her eye with
extra-large black text.

‘Threats of Mayhem’
, the Daily Coin
pronounced.

‘A Thief’s Promise’
, the Times of
Khalanheim countered.

Though sick to death of reading newspapers,
Tyrissa caved and handed the shaggy haired boy manning the booth a pair of
copper coins for a copy of the Times. She read as she walked, eyes flickering
between paper and street to weave through traffic. The Thieves were promising a
night of chaos and mayhem, as the headlines said, and they promised it tonight.
Every major guild, both newspapers, and Central received coordinated warnings
late yesterday, all in the form of neatly printed letters. Guard your
warehouses and vaults, they said, we’re coming.

Tyrissa hurried home with increased urgency as
the feeling that this would tie into her own search struck her. She had even
less time to fit the remaining pieces together than she thought.

Liran had a spread of ledgers and receipts and
paperwork on the table, working even when he wasn’t. He muttered a greeting as
she entered their shared home but didn’t look up as Tyrissa set her small haul
of bread on a clear corner of the table. She unfolded the newspaper and read
the headline article again. Tonight might be her chance.

“Liran, did you look into that list of business I
gave you?”

“They’re shell operations for the Rift Company,” he
said, eyes still fixed on a particular sum at the bottom of a page.

“All of them?”

“All of them. It’s common practice for various
insurance and tax reasons.”

Well that was one pair of threads tied together. Tyrissa
ran through her mental checklist, a list that had become a mantra over the last
few days. Vralin’s bounty was funded by Guldres of the Rift Company. The Rift
Company employed the Windmage during an expedition that went sour. Vralin now
worked with the Thieves and they were hitting Rift Company properties, but
rarely taking anything. ‘
Your husband knows what I want.’
But what did Vralin
want? He didn’t mind the bounty otherwise he wouldn’t be in Khalanheim.
Something specific had kept him rooted in the city since escaping Morgale.

“What can you tell me about Johan Guldres?” Everything
led back to Guldres.

Liran ran a hand through his hair, finally looking
up from his work. “He’s a board member of the Rift Trade Company. He oversees
the Rift Company’s Hithian Crater area operations, including high-risk
expeditions and excavations. He’s fabulously wealthy, which is well enough as
his wife is a big spender.”

“Would he happen to have a personal collection of
Hithian artifacts?”

“Yes. Pulls them from the ruins himself. Well,
not personally, but funds the men that do. That’s why he dropped the scratch
for that amber teardrop necklace. It’s a rather unique Hithian relic
and
status
symbol in one, apparently easily stolen, package.”

It was the last piece she needed. The advertising
posters for the new exhibit at the university’s observatory had a footnote that
declared: ‘including numerous items from private collections’. There
had
been a large number of Talons on site during her last visit to the library,
scouting the grounds and setting up security details. Tyrissa suspected that if
she could sneak a look at the Cadre’s logbook of contracts she would see a rejected
commission from the university. Her decision was made in an instant.

“Liran, I think I’m going to do something stupid
soon.”

He sighed. “Must you?”

“I think Guldres is setting a trap for Vralin and
the Thieves at the observatory.” She tapped the newspaper. “Both sides will use
this ‘Thieves Promise’ as cover. Guldres must have something from Hithia that
Vralin wants, maybe something from the expedition that set Vralin off in the
first place and earned the bounty. So why not put it is out in the open, set a
trap, and take him down? Guldres removes a threat, executes on his bounty and
any Thieves they capture are a bonus to throw to Central.” She spread her hands
and said, “Thoughts?”

“I think you’re a quick study in Khalan intrigue,
sister. Please, continue.”

She pressed on. “The string of empty hits must
have been Vralin and his allies trying to ferret out whatever it is he’s
looking for. The attack at Southwest’s party was an escalation and a threat. If
Guldres is going to serve it up on a platter, why not outmaneuver him and turn
the trap on its head? If you’re going to spring a trap you go in full bore and
bring an unexpected element to the situation. You turn the surprise around on
the other guy. I see no reason why I can’t do the same. I go to the observatory
tonight and see what I can make happen.”

“So your plan, if we can call it that, is to jump
into the middle of a suspected Thieves heist nested within a trap and, what, ask
politely?”

Tyrissa drummed her fingers against the table in
thought. She knew it wouldn’t be so simple, or without violence. These last
months had hardened her, constantly training or sparring, either on the caravan
or with the Cadre. She tore down a fire elemental (if a little one), and stood
against a flesh and ash daemon. What was one man, Pactbound or not? After all,
all she had were questions.

“Yes. Though perhaps not
politely
. Vralin
is the only connection I have back to Tsellien. He must know something and
might help me. Even a rejection could be useful information.” She knew that was
a vain hope, raised only to reassure Liran. The sight of Karine’s wrecked home
came to mind. Tyrissa had no proof Vralin was involved with that beyond a hunch
and a dread.

“But he’s—”

“Pactbound? And? That just puts us on even
ground. Liran, I’ve spent almost every day since I got this Pact trying to
forget it, or run from it, or simply worrying about it. And every time I think
I’m getting closer to answers they’re yanked out of reach. I need to
do
something.”

“I don’t want a repeat of the events that gave
you that Pact, Ty. I don’t want my next letter home to include
that
,”
Liran said.

“He’s just a man. It won’t be a repeat of that.”

“I’m not going to be able to stop you, am I?” There
was an intangible change in his tone, in his face. For all his casual dismissal
or hands-off treatment of her Pact these last few months Liran must have hoped,
as Tyrissa once hoped, that there was a way out. Her resolve to keep going
deeper had finally broken through that flimsy delusion and Liran now accepted
it as fact, as the way it must be.

“No. You won’t.”

Liran gave his mouth a twist, as if swallowing a
bitter drink. “Be careful out there, Tyrissa,” he said after a moment, “You
never know what the city will spit out at you on a night like this.”

And that was exactly what Tyrissa wanted. She
still had time to get ready and it was going to be a long night.

The library was closed by the time she reached
the university, but Tyrissa could see a light shining through the little windows
set into the doors. She pounded out a set of knocks, causing the glass to
rattle. Silence answered, but the light shifted and began to approach. Tyrissa
knocked again for good measure and soon the golden light filled the window. A
shadow passed over the other side, the locks clicked, and the door cracked open
to reveal a narrow selection of Archivist Pieterszen’s wizened face. Tyrissa
thought of the library as a second home but she suspected it was Pieterszen’s
first.

“Tyrissa? Go home, girl,” he said with a weary
bluster. “The campus is on lockdown. There’s trouble afoot tonight.”

“I know,” she said. She knew better than nearly
everyone, thanks in part to this very place. “I’m here to help.”

Pieterszen opened the door wider and held his
lamp up to get a better look at her. He cocked his head to one side, appraising
her as if rereading a passage with a second meaning in mind. Tyrissa was
dressed for trouble being afoot, wearing dark colors with her staff across her
back and two knives at her hips.

“Are you here… professionally?”

“Freelancing,” she said, shaking her head.
“Please, I need to get into the old fort tunnels that connect to the towers. I
need to get to the tower closest to the observatory.” From there she would have
a superior view of the inner grounds and access to the rooftops.

Pieterszen mulled it over for a moment before
pushing the door further open and motioning her inside. “Follow me,” he said as
he shuffled away into the stacks. “And shut the door behind you.” Tyrissa
complied and trotted after the rustling brown robes in the retreating pool of
light.

Abandoned by night and lit by a single swaying
lamp, the library became an analogue for the mythical great libraries of the
fallen civilizations in stories. The lamp sent fleeting fingers down the
aisles, flashes of illumination upon lost secrets. The heights of the tall
stacks and shelves vanished in the gloom of the vaulted ceiling, and the
alcoves with their study desks became sealed vaults bearing ancient secrets and
the objects of power. Tyrissa noticed they headed away from the storerooms that
held the newspaper archives.

“Is it not the same way as the news archives?”

“Not for the north towers. That way was filled in
years ago during a renovation.” They entered a hallway lined with doors to
little offices, each with a nameplate claiming them for different senior staff
member. The hallway dead-ended at a wall covered by a flaking oil painting
depicting a grander version of the library behind them, shaped the same but
with shelves twice as high and towering windows letting in golden rays of
light.

The archivist noticed her studying the painting.
“The original design,” he muttered as he fished out a skeleton key from the
depths of his robes. “The university had the budget to commission an artist to
paint it, but not enough to actually build it. Typical. Better off as it is
now. All that sunlight would have been bad for the books.”

Pieterszen opened the last door on the left, one
with ‘Archivist’ labeled on the door, but no name below. Inside was an empty
room ruled by dust and cobwebs, but with a second door set oddly into one wall,
a half disintegrated thing clinging to rusted hinges. Pieterszen nodded toward
it and said, “Follow that down. It connects to the old tunnels and goes
straight on to the northeast tower.”

“Thank you, Archivist.”

“Never saw you here,” he said before shuffling
out of the room and leaving Tyrissa in the darkness. She fumbled for the
gloworb clipped to the staff harness and pressed the lever, the white light banishing
the gloom. She carefully pulled the door outward, worried that it might break
at her touch. A stairway descended into the darkness below. Tyrissa paused and
let out a short sigh.

Marching off into the darkness is getting a
little old.

As before, the tunnels had all the charm of
martial design, built of rough stone blocks with little eye for ornamentation.
Pieterszen was correct in it being ‘straight on’ as all the side passages were
long bricked off with newer masonry. Tyrissa’s footfalls echoed up the tunnels,
as if she marched with a unit instead of alone. Soon she came to the square
base of a tower’s interior that reached up into the shadows. A wide stone
stairway hugged the walls to ascend the tower at harsh right angles. Pairs of blocked-off
arrow slits were set into the walls at each corner landing. They ceased being
bricked over halfway up the tower and lent Tyrissa narrow glimpses of the city
outside. An unlocked trap door and short ladder were at the top of the stairs.
Tyrissa gently swung the door open and peered out. The tower’s top was open to
the sky, with only weathered columns at each corner to suggest that it once had
the same pointed roof as its twin at the northwest corner of the university.
Not wanting to make a beacon out of herself, Tyrissa wrapped the gloworb in a spare
dark cloth before climbing out into the night.

By the Khalan calendar the date was the twenty-fourth
of Ironskies and the night’s low ceiling of oppressive, deep gray clouds
complied with the name. From here Tyrissa could see most of Khalanheim spread
out to the south, the main streets outlined by pale lines of light from the night
lamps. Fire engulfed a building near the southern edge of the city, the flames
leaping high into the air and casting a harsher orange glow into the night. To
the east, down the hill, the blades of the windmills spun in the night winds of
the Rift, fading in and out of the night lamps’ light like tethered ghosts.