Wedding Bells, Magic Spells (11 page)

It was beyond sad that Markus Sevelien believed—and perhaps rightfully so—that he could never have that. I guess that was what it meant when people said they were married to their work.

Brina Daesage was now a security team of one. Neither she nor Dalis had budged from Markus’s side.

Justinius’s apartment guards were keeping a very close eye on the elf security captain.

Maybe for good reason.

She’d tapped out a code on the crystal next to the mirror that it was safe for Markus to come through. A crystal that’d been destroyed along with the mirror.

Maybe that wasn’t all that she’d signaled.

Markus didn’t look uneasy having her sitting that close to him, so he trusted her.

I should trust her, but until I knew more, I couldn’t do that, at least not entirely.

Brina looked a little on edge. That was understandable whether or not she was a traitor. I would’ve been jumpy, too if I’d been locked in a tower guarded by elite, magically and militarily talented knights. Brina didn’t know these men, and they didn’t know her. Not to mention, she had a new job and her charge had been murdered before he’d even arrived at his destination.

The distrust was so thick in here you could’ve cut it with a dull knife.

And I’d just added a layer of my own.

Brina was probably just what she said she was—Markus’s security chief—and nothing else.

But during the past few months, paranoia and I had become fast friends. More than once, I’d had my new best buddy to thank for my continued survival. I wasn’t about to give her the heave-ho now.

I know the Guardians would’ve preferred to be guarding only Markus. Not him plus a heavily armed and obviously dangerous elven woman. Though after having me around, these guys probably had a whole new definition of “armed and dangerous.”

Markus saw me and smiled.

I returned it as best I could. “So, do you keep track of how many times you’ve dodged death?”

“Stopped doing that long ago. Though Brina tells me that I dodged a little too slowly this time and that I have you and Mychael to thank.”

“Me? Mychael was the one who brought you back, not—”

“Brina tells me that thing had me
and
Mychael. You made it let go.”

Me and my new color-coded magic.

“Do you remember anything after you stepped through the mirror in Silvanlar?” I asked.

Markus’s brow creased as he tried to recall, or merely process what I’d said. “Absolutely nothing.”

There were ways to get around that, but Markus wasn’t strong enough yet for any of them. Either Mychael or Justinius could magically take a look through his memories in the last few minutes before he stepped into that mirror, and the time he’d spent in between.

His eyes tried to focus on the room behind us. “Where—”

“Justinius Valerian’s apartment. You’re in the guest room. It’s the safest place on the island that’s not a vault.”

Markus nodded weakly in approval. “Brina?”

The bodyguard immediately came to Markus’s bedside, Dalis or no Dalis. “I’m here, sir.”

“Tellan Bain?”

“He’s been taken into custody for questioning.”

I looked from one to the other. “Who is—”

“Our chief mirror mage,” Brina said.

“You think he sabotaged his own mirror?”

“Anything’s possible, and we operate under that assumption until it’s disproven. Tellan Bain was responsible for the preparation and protection of that mirror. He knows the procedure if it’s tampered with.”

“Brina, I’d like to speak with Raine alone.”

“Yes, sir.” If she didn’t like it, she gave no sign. She simply went and stood on the other side of the room.

He glanced at Dalis and raised one brow. The healer rolled
her eyes. “Five minutes. That’s all you get. If I see you’re getting
too tired, it’s less.”

I smiled, “Thank you, Dalis.”

The healer retreated to the other side of the room. If Markus hadn’t been dead for several minutes, she would have given us some privacy and left the room. But he had died and Dalis wasn’t taking any chances. I was grateful for it. I wasn’t taking any chances with Markus, either.

Markus glanced at Dalis. No expression, no raised eyebrow, just a glance. Someone who didn’t know Markus wouldn’t have read anything into it. I knew Markus. I heard plenty.

“She’s Justinius’s personal healer. I know and trust her.” My mouth formed the words in complete silence. Markus read lips and so did I. Even across the room, Brina would be able to hear even the barest whisper. She was an elf. Our ears weren’t just there to look good. Markus said he wanted to speak to me alone, and I was going to maintain his privacy. I sat facing Markus with my back to Brina and Dalis.

Markus blinked in response, took a breath, and let it out. Translation: Good. If you trust her, I trust her.

A man of few words and fewer expressions was Markus.

“And by not actually speaking, you can save even more strength,” I continued speaking soundlessly.

One corner of Markus’s lips twitched upward. “And Brina can’t hear us. I can trust Dalis; you can trust Brina.”

“Right now, anyone I don’t know, I don’t trust. I won’t take the chance. Not with you.”

He opened his mouth to speak, and I held up a hand, “Brina said there wasn’t anything fishy on your end before she came through. Did that change before you stepped in?”

Markus’s flat look spoke volumes.

“I know, you’d wouldn’t have stepped through if it had. I had to ask. They could have thrown you in. You trusted your mirror mage?”

Markus nodded once.

I told him about what Tam and Imala had said about the Rak’kari and the very strong possibility of Khrynsani involvement. Then I told him about the high probability of elven involvement—and a Khrynsani partnership. Markus was far from peak condition, but he didn’t need anything kept from him that could shed light on what had been done to him.

One of the apartment’s massive double doors opened as the door sentries admitted Mychael and Isibel. Neither looked pissed. It wasn’t exactly sibling harmony, but I’d take it.

Markus pulled himself up in bed, and held his hands out to Isibel.

The new elven ambassador smiled like a delighted little girl and ran to the director of elven intelligence who enfolded her in a hug.

Well, that was something you didn’t see every day.

Markus and Isibel were happy. Dalis? Not so much. In her opinion, that was entirely too much activity for her patient, but since Mychael was here, she’d yield that decision to him. They exchanged glances, Mychael nodded, Dalis sighed.

Isibel told Markus what had happened to the
Blue Rose
—and to Ambassador Santis Eldor. I didn’t know how well they’d known each other, but the late ambassador had been a lifelong diplomat, a highly educated, well-traveled man of even temper and open mind. I’d been briefed on the delegates I didn’t already know and had been looking forward to meeting him.

We let them have a few minutes of quiet reunion. It was Markus who opened up the conversation to include me and Mychael—but especially Mychael.

“You’re ready for this,” he was telling her. He cut a bemused glance at Mychael. “And don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.”

Mychael raised his hands defensively. “I never said she wasn’t qualified. I merely would have liked to have known that she’d advanced to first in line for a major ambassadorship.”

Isibel patted Markus’s hand. “Don’t worry. We’re past that part. Mychael and I have been talking.”

“Not yelling?” I asked.

“Not yelling,” she assured me with a smile. “My last promotion coincided with when he was chasing Sarad Nukpana for the Saghred.”

“A few days before we tracked him to Mermeia,” Mychael added.

“You were most definitely busy,” I noted.

“Yes, I was.”

“It was a notable promotion, but not worth disturbing my brother while he was fighting the forces of evil,” she flashed me a smile, “and attempting to woo my future sister-in-law. Both were infinitely more important than my promotion.”

“I can assure you that Isibel is a natural-born diplomat,” Markus told Mychael. “As you’ll see for yourself in the coming days.” He smiled. “You and she share many similarities. I will admit to working behind the scenes to ensure that talent like hers didn’t get pushed aside because she is a woman.”

If Markus believed in her, that was more than enough for me. For anyone in the elven diplomatic service to even remotely take her seriously, Isibel would have to be twice as smart and work three times as hard as any man.

“When there was an opening on Santis Eldor’s senior staff,” Markus was saying, “I recommended Isibel, and after meeting her, Ambassador Eldor wholeheartedly agreed with me. I know that he was looking forward to this being her introduction on the world stage.” A shadow crossed Markus’s face. “He never anticipated that he wouldn’t be by her side. I will be.”

My friend said those last three words as though they were a solemn oath. I swore an oath to myself that I’d keep him safe so he could fulfill it.

It was time to go see another friend. I liked the friend, just not
what he did for a living.

Vidor Kalta was a nachtmagus.

Most people thought a necromancer and a nachtmagus were the same thing. To use a snake analogy, necromancers were garden snakes and a nachtmagus was a cobra. Necromancers could only communicate with the dead. They did séances, detected hauntings, and could tell you if you had a frisky poltergeist or an ancestor who simply refused to leave.

A nachtmagus could not only communicate with your dearly departed, he or she could control them or any other dead—in all of their forms. I’d heard that given enough time, money, and motivation, a nachtmagus could raise the dead.

Since coming to Mid, I’d found that there’s actually a Conclave college major in necromancy. The college produced both necromancers and nachtmagi. Most of the students with stronger talent became nachtmagi, and the lesser talents were necromancers. There was more money in the former, and if you had the talent, why not go big or go home?

In my opinion, no one majored in either one unless they were just plain weird. In theory, the Conclave college had a way to weed out the weirdos. I don’t know what that said about the department’s graduates. They wanted to work with dead things, but at the same time, they couldn’t be weird. It had to be the college’s smallest graduating class.

Vidor Kalta taught graduate-level courses in the necrology department. About a month ago, I’d gotten to experience firsthand just how good he was at his chosen calling. He’d been called to help us discover who or what had killed an elven general—and how. The “how” had been the truly creepy part.

As a seeker, I could pick up impressions from inanimate objects touched by someone I was looking for. I discovered that day that a dead body qualified as the ultimate inanimate object. Thanks to Vidor’s expertise, we’d found that after escaping the Saghred, Sarad Nukpana was using a black magic ritual to regenerate his soul into a physical body by taking the lifeforces and memories of selected victims. Nukpana had selected the elven general as one of his victims for his vast knowledge of elven military intelligence. The general had been but one victim. Thanks to Vidor’s knowledge, there had only been one subsequent victim, and it was an individual who’d been even more evil than Sarad Nukpana—and yes, it was possible.

Vidor Kalta was tall, thin, and born to wear funereal black. His dark hair was cropped close to his head, probably as a safety precaution. I’d found out the hard way that corpses could get grabby. Kalta’s features were sharp, and his face had the pallor one would expect of someone who worked mostly nights. But it was his eyes that gave him away. Black and bright as a raven’s, Vidor Kalta’s eyes were a reflection of a quick mind, a keen intellect, and an incredible power. Power that was all the more impressive because of his restraint. It was as if the man had Death on a leash and it was following him around like a puppy.

When Phaelan and I came into the room, Vidor was replacing the tarp over one of the bodies.

“We’ve got to stop meeting like this,” I told him.

The nachtmagus smiled in a quick flash of white teeth. “A murder victim in the room doesn’t make for a very pleasant social encounter, does it?”

“No, it doesn’t. So, it was murder?”

“Of the most dark and evil kind.”

Of course, it was.

The last time I’d worked with Vidor, we’d been in a basement room in the citadel. We were still in the citadel, but this room was aboveground and even had a window, which admitted some life-affirming sunshine. If Phaelan’s furtive glances were any indication, it also provided a handy escape route. I wondered if the distance to the ground was survivable. I also wondered whether Phaelan cared. The room was also larger, which would give my cousin room for his running jump—or, considering that Mychael and Vegard were here, room to swing and toss a dead body that might not have the decency to stay that way.

I only included Mychael and Vegard among the potential tossers. I knew better than to depend on Phaelan to touch the thing, even if it meant throwing it out a window.

My cousin had stationed himself in the corner closest to the door, and a couple of flying leaps to the window. He liked to keep his escape options open. Phaelan didn’t like dead bodies, but he was absolutely terrified of nachtmagi.

Vidor Kalta had asked Phaelan to be here. Vidor had asked; I had insisted. If the nachtmagus thought Phaelan might have seen something helpful on that ship, he’d come ashore and share it with the rest of us if I’d had to drag him by his boots—or send Vegard and a couple of his brother Guardians to do it. Fortunately, Phaelan had come along quietly. But if one of those bodies moved, my cousin wasn’t going to stay quiet or still.

To be honest, neither would I.

The room was empty except for two tables with the two bodies—the captain and first mate of the pirate ship that’d attacked the
Blue Rose
and killed Ambassador Eldor. Thankfully, the bodies were covered. Even more thankfully, they weren’t moving.