Agents of Artifice: A Planeswalker Novel (8 page)

Hot, loud, bright, and smelly. So self-pityingly miserable was Kallist as he finally passed through the gate, he failed to notice one of the guards staring with abnormal intensity at him and his companion, before the press of the crowd blocked the armored woman from view.

All that said … It looked like home to him, at least more so than Avaric ever had. Ornate carvings adorned the columns and high arches of the monolithic buildings—many of which were sculpted from a strange, aquatic-blue stone that gleamed like the lake below—and pennants hung limply from minarets of stone or
crystal. The people here were dressed in a variety of bright, jovial colors, commonly seen among the middle classes who wanted to show that they could afford such frivolities as rich and cheerful dyes.

And there were so very, very many of those people, probably at least half as many on this street alone as dwelt in Avaric entire.

Kallist turned to Liliana, his mouth open to make some disparaging comment that she would doubtless find less pithy than he did, and felt a thrill of panic run through him. His hand lashed out, viper-quick, dragging her to a halt. Before she could so much as squawk a protest, he was walking, casually but quickly, off toward one side of the avenue.

“What?” she hissed at him, mouth just beside his ear so that he might hear over the noise of the crowd.

“Probably nothing,” he breathed back at her, though he slackened neither his hold nor his pace. “But one of the things I learned in my years with the Consortium was that when a whole gaggle of armed guards starts moving in your direction, you want to make a quick trip elsewhere.”

“Is that so?” Liliana tossed her head, as though clearing her hair from her face, and casually glanced back. “So, um … What do you do when they start pointing at you and yelling, then?”

“That would be
run.”

They ran, shoving and elbowing their way through the crowds, crowds that seemed determined to meander as leisurely as possible, to cluster in every intersection, to gather thickly in the fugitives’ path and to part like a curtain before the pursuing lawmen.

Kallist and Liliana swiftly grew lost in the unfamiliar byways of Favarial. They knew neither where they were going nor how to return to where they’d been. And the guards, who knew every twist and turn, every nook and cranny, gained ground.

They doubled back around blind turns, and the soldiers traced their route. Kallist cloaked them in images of native passersby while sending their own illusory doppelgangers fleeing down distant byways, yet somehow the guards always knew.

So long had it been since Kallist had faced any real danger—Semner and his thugs aside—that his instincts had grown rusty indeed. Otherwise, he might have seen a handful of Semner’s people, scattered across lower rooftops and balconies or hiding within the milling crowd, watching for any sign of deception and signaling to the hunting guards.

A time or two, a thug raised a crossbow, tempted by a perfect shot, only to be dissuaded from pulling the trigger by a companion. As long as the spotters remained unseen, the guards shouldered all the risk. Should the shot go wide or draw the attention of whichever of the twosome was not the target, the results could be unpleasant indeed. And so they kept low and silent, serving only as eyes and ears, rather than hands and blades.

Panting hard, sweating like a demon in church, the mages skidded around still another corner and found themselves staring down the length of an avenue. It was much like any other street, covered in cobblestones, lined by shops that stood far taller than they needed to, in pursuit of status and respectability. It also extended abominably, almost impossibly far before any other street or alleyway offered a viable crossroad. Before them, ambling from one establishment to the next, the crowds formed a living wall. Kallist and Liliana exchanged grim glances, and each knew the other’s thoughts as clearly as if they’d spoken.

There was no way they could cover the distance before their pursuers caught up with them.

“If you’ve been waiting to surprise me with a flying spell,” Liliana said grimly, “this would be an excellent time.”

Kallist frowned bitterly. “Jace, maybe, could do it. I don’t have the first clue. What about your—”

She shook her head. “I can hover, but it’s not exactly a quick means of escape.” She grimaced and turned to face the nearing pursuit. “We can take them, Kallist.”

“No. Killing city guards is never worth the repercussions. Trust me, I know.”

And then the time for talk was past. The citizens dispersed, blowing leaves scattering before a wind of armor and blades; Kallist and Liliana found themselves surrounded by a hedge of sword and spear.

“Afternoon, officers,” Kallist said, a sickly grin plastered to his face. “Is there a problem?”

The man who pushed his way to the front was tall and slender, with an autumn-red mustache drooping over his mouth, and a chin sharp enough to serve as a backup weapon. Human, but perhaps with the faintest trace of elven blood in his ancestry, he wore a sulfur-yellow tabard above a shirt of chain, and a badge of red metal on his left breast in the general shape of a dragon. A mark of rank, probably, but damned if Kallist knew what it meant. Ever since the dissolution of the Legion, every district or aristocrat-employed security force on Ravnica seemed to go whole hog with their own signs and symbols.

“You shouldn’t have run,” he barked, his breath heavy with arrogance and a few lingering traces of breakfast eggs. “My men and I don’t enjoy chasing folk. You’ve just made things harder for yourselves.”

“But we didn’t do anything!” Liliana protested, wearing her best wide-eyed, lips-parted, beautifully innocent face. “You frightened us. Of course we ran; we don’t even know why you were chasing us!”

She was good, no doubt; many of the guards found themselves lowering their weapons without conscious thought. But their commander, who had seen it all before and laughed at it then, reacted only to laugh at it once more.

“How about that, boys? They didn’t do anything. Guess we have to let them go.”

The youngest soldier on the squad turned toward his commander with puzzled expression. “Really?”

The older guard rolled his eyes heavenward and cuffed the younger hard across the side of his head.

“We have solid reports,” he told the prisoners, “of the two of you causing all manner of ruckus, disturbing the peace, and even assaulting citizens over the course of the last couple of days. You’re both under arrest.”

“We just passed through the bridge gates no more than an hour ago,” Kallist protested. “Check with your own damned guards!”

The commander only shrugged. “They watch hundreds of folk pass in and out every day. Can’t be expected to trust their recollections of any specific two, can we?

“But don’t worry. If you’re telling the truth, we’ll get it all sorted out. Won’t take more than, oh, I’d say three or four days. Maybe a week on the outside.”

Everything clicked into place in Kallist’s mind, and he cursed himself for an idiot. The timing on this could be no coincidence. It could only be Semner’s work.

But that meant, just maybe, that the guards could point them toward the ugly bastard himself.

“Go along for now!” he hissed under his breath to Liliana, even as he saw her lips begin to twitch.

She peered at him as though he’d gone mad, but allowed herself to relax.

Two of the guards stepped forward to take the broadsword and crossbow. Grumbling, one of them patted down Kallist, searching for other weapons. The other, with a licentious grin, did the same to Liliana. Kallist recognized the brutal gleam in her eyes, and knew that the guard had better make every effort not to run into her again. Then, hands manacled together, surrounded by the entire squad, they found themselves marched down the streets of Favarial.

“As far as prisons go,” Kallist told Liliana some hours later, “I’ve certainly been in worse.”

She glared at him. “If this is supposed to comfort me, may I suggest that you try some other approach? Perhaps try punching me in the jaw. That would probably work better.”

“I’ve also escaped from far worse,” he protested.

“That’s almost impressive.”

“Well, almost thank you.”

Their current abode was a drab cell, stone-walled on three sides, with a barred gate on the fourth. One of several identical chambers in the watch-house of Favarial, all of which smelled of lingering sweat, fear, and humanoid wastes, it was probably intended to hold no fewer than a dozen prisoners.

That they were alone in the cell only con firmed that the official reason for their arrest was a sham.

Kallist and Liliana sat on stone cots that were bolted thoroughly to the floor, and the cell’s “chamber pot” was nothing more than a tiny hole, far too small for even the thinnest and most desperate prisoner to squeeze through. At the hall’s far end, well beyond reach of anyone within the cells, the only exit was guarded by the biggest viashino Kallist had ever seen. Her scales were a dull tan with a snake-like pattern of red and green rings. She wore a custom-formed breastplate of steel, and leaned on … Kallist wasn’t even sure what to call the ugly weapon: perhaps a morningstar with anger management issues. It was a heavy steel bar as long as a man’s leg, one end wrapped in leather, the rest of its span covered in a chaotic forest of spikes and spines and blades. She watched every one of the cells, constant, unblinking.

The prison was, by all normal measures, perfectly designed to provide neither any means of escape nor even the most crude of improvised weaponry.

“Normal measures,” of course, had no meaning to its present occupants. Oh, it had wards and sigils to prevent wizards from escaping—but the prison’s builders had never thought to contend with mages, with walkers, of Liliana’s power.

Obviously, Semner’s people hadn’t told the squad commander much about whom he was dealing with. If they had, he might have taken more precautions.

If they had, the fact that the mages hadn’t escaped already would have warned him that something was very, very wrong.

Kallist and Liliana sat, continuing on occasion to bicker and silently wondering how long they would have to wait. Finally, as night slowly crept up behind the loitering daylight, cudgel in hand, they heard the heavy oaken door to the prison hallway screech open. They moved as one toward the bars so they could see. The officer who had arrested them stepped past the reptilian guard, grinned broadly at both of them, and strode toward the door of their cell.

“I’m Lieutenant Albin,” he introduced himself. “And you are …?”

“Not,” Kallist answered gruffly.

“Enjoying the accommodations?” the lieutenant asked, refusing to be put off.

“Enjoying the bribe Semner paid you?” Liliana retorted.

Albin’s grin didn’t falter, but his voice turned hard. “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he told them, presumably more for the viashino’s benefit than their own. Still, he moved nearer to the cell, so that anything else they might say wouldn’t be so easy to overhear.

“Our ‘mutual friend,’” the lieutenant began, “seems to think that you might know something that would help him locate his target. Cooperate and I can make your stay here a lot more comfortable; might even get you out of here faster. If not …”

“What are you offering?” Kallist asked. Albin smiled once more and stepped closer still so he could whisper, stopping just outside the bars.

It was precisely what they’d been waiting for. Concealed in his fist, Kallist clutched one of the iron bolts that had held the cot to the floor, a bolt that was supposed to be impossible to remove. Kallist had never mastered more than the most rudimentary spells of telekinesis—even Jace hadn’t been an expert there—but chipping away at a bit of mortar? That, even he could manage. With a wolfish grin, he dropped into a crouch, stuck his hand through the bars, and shoved the rusty length of metal into Albin’s inner thigh.

He and the guard fell back from one another even as Albin’s scream echoed through the cells. The bolt vanished up Kallist’s sleeve, hidden not merely by cloth but a thin layer of illusion. The lieutenant fell writhing to the floor, hands clasped around the jagged, bleeding wound.

The viashino leaped toward them, weapon raised high, but Kallist and Liliana had already retreated to the back of the cell, beyond her reach. Several long seconds passed as the reptile glared, her tongue flickering in and out, before she knelt and lifted the wounded man as easily as she would a newborn babe.

For a moment more she hesitated, discomfited at the notion of leaving her post. But she would be only a few moments, and the growing pool of blood suggested rather firmly that time was of the essence. She cast one more furious gaze at the prisoners and then vanished through the hall’s only door, slamming and barring it behind her.

“Is this enough?” Kallist asked, producing the blood-soaked bolt.

Liliana barely glanced at it. “More than.”

“Good. Then let’s get out of here before some guard shows up to take her place and we have to kill someone who doesn’t deserve it.”

By the time anyone else entered the hall, the mages were simply gone, with no evidence they’d ever been present save a few scattered iron bars, and tiny bits of dust that had once mortared those bars in place.