All That Glitters (21 page)

Androlli was there, his hand extended to shake. Androlli—­the mirror man, the Mage Defender—­wanted to shake his hand. Artus took it and shook. He felt a little dizzy. One of the judges was speaking to him.
“State your name for the record.”

Artus realized he was standing there with his mouth hanging open. “Uhhh . . . Artus. Of Jondas Crossing. It's in the North—­Benethor.”

The judge—­the Fey judge, if her vermillion robes meant anything—­smiled at him. “How do you know the accused?”

Artus looked down at Tyvian and saw that the smuggler was looking at him intently, as though angry, but . . . but he wasn't frowning. The look made Artus forget the question, so the judge repeated it. “I . . . uhhh . . . I've been traveling with him for a few years now.”

“He is your employer?”
the judge asked.

Artus frowned. “Not exactly. We're . . . uhhh . . . partners, I guess.”

Tyvian coughed. Artus looked down to see Tyvian still staring at him. The smuggler jerked his head to the side, as though twitching. Artus frowned. “What?”

Tyvian rolled his eyes. “Why do I waste my time?”

Artus found himself yelling. “We
are
partners—­that was the deal, remember?
I
remember! I remember nursing you back to health after you got chopped up by Gallo! I remember the time I saved your arse back in Ayventry, too. If it weren't for me, you woulda had to carry all your crap from Freegate to here. We're partners, dammit!”

Tyvian shook his head, “Artus, that's not . . .”

“No!” Artus kept rolling. “No—­you need to hear this, you stuck-­up jackass! You respect Hool's opinion, you let Brana do whatever he wants, but what about
me,
huh? It's always ‘go here, Artus,' ‘go there,' ‘do this,' ‘carry this thing,' ‘you walk into the poison gas room first!' It's a load of Kroth-­spawned slop, is what! If you'da listened to me and not come back here, you wouldn't be in this mess—­how about that? I betcha feel bad for not listening to me now, don't you?”

Tyvian groaned and shook his head. “What do you want—­an apology? Hann's boots, boy, are you aware of just how sullen you've been lately? You're quick to point out just how important you are to me, but when was the last time you considered how important
I
am to
you
? Eh?”

The judges exchanged glances. The Fey judge chuckled.
“I believe the court can confirm that they know each other.”

Artus wasn't listening. “You? Are you kidding? What do you ever do for me anyway? You don't care about me at all—­I'm just a tool for you to use. Just like
everybody
is a tool for you. You're some kinda . . . kinda . . .”

“Sociopath?” Tyvian offered.

“Yeah! A sociopath! You treat ­people like tiles in a
tsuul
match, and me worst of all. I'm basically your slave.”

“Order in the court!”
Judge Forsayth raised her orb.

Neither Artus nor Tyvian were listening, though. Tyvian was too busy yelling. “I fed you, I clothed you, I taught you to read, I've saved your life a dozen times!”

Artus held up one hand. “Five times! Five bloody times! Not a dozen—­
Hool's
saved me a dozen times! Hell, at least three of those times you was
pissed
you had to do it, too! You hate me!”

“ORDER!”

Defenders ran over to restrain Tyvian, but he jumped up on the Block. “What a load of utter nonsense! Hate you? Are you kidding? If I hated you, I'd have left you to die a dozen—­”

“IT WAS FIVE!” Artus screamed, shaking his fist at Tyvian. “And the ring
made
you! MADE YOU!”

“Oh, and do you like your new job better? Does that weasel Andolon give you everything you ever wanted, huh? He pay you enough gold to forget about our partnership? What about Brana? Does
he
know what you're about to do to me?”

At this point Artus found his voice silenced by some kind of sorcery. Tyvian was yanked off the Block by two Defenders and wrestled to the ground. Judge Forsayth's voice boomed through the chamber.
“That is quite enough of that. Any further emotional outbursts, young man, and I'll find you in contempt of court—­three days in the stocks!
”
She looked down at Tyvian.
“And as for you, Master Reldamar, you are making a poor impression on the court, and it will be reflected at time of sentencing. Is that clear to both of you?”

Artus found himself released. “Yes ma'am.”

Tyvian snorted. “Gods, I'd hate to make a poor impression.” He struggled to his feet and gave Artus that same, strange, intense look again. “Say, Artus—­can I have a smoke?”

Then everything clicked. Artus slapped his forehead—­the look! All those hours spent on nonverbal cues had practically vanished from his mind, but now they came flooding back. This one meant:
I need your help.

Artus looked behind him. Androlli watched him carefully, his hands wrapped around his staff. Behind and beyond him, a gallery of hundreds followed his every movement. In the back he saw Andolon give him an enthusiastic thumbs-­up. He took a deep breath—­decision time.

It turned out making the decision wasn't very hard at all.

He reached into his pocket and pulled out the sparkstone Tyvian had given him. “Sure, okay.” He flicked it at Tyvian. The little alchemical device bounced off Tyvian's jacket with a little flash of sparks.

Then Tyvian's entire torso burst into flame.

 

I
t is one thing to concoct a long-­term plan to have oneself set on fire in the midst of Keeper's Court. It is quite another thing to be actually lit on fire. This Tyvian realized as the flames engulfed his body, flicking up around his face and ears with hot, red tongues, and he began to scream uncontrollably. It took him a second to realize the enchantment on his clothing kept himself from actually being burned (though it was doing a good job of singeing his hair). He kept screaming—­his panic was part of the plan anyway.

All around him ­people were in various stages of shock. The Defenders on the floor seemed uncertain how to proceed, though Androlli was shouting orders at them: “Get a bucket!” and so on. The gallery was in a frenzy, split pretty evenly between howling for his decease and weeping for his salvation. The judges, for their part, looked on with academic interest—­one of them took notes. Clearly they'd never seen anybody burn to death, and this was to be an educational experience.

Tyvian yanked with all his strength against the mageglass chain that held him to the Block but did so while screaming his loudest, so as to disguise his intent as merely the death throes of a man in agony. The mageglass didn't bend or give so much as a quarter inch; that was the thing about mageglass—­completely immune to acts of physical force. You could hit this chain with a twenty-­pound siege maul for days on end and all you'd do was break the maul or, possibly, your back—­mageglass was the Dweomer rendered physical, it was order personified. It would never break.

It did, however, melt. Not to sunlight, not to mild heat—­no—­but fire? Fire was as pure a form of naturally occurring Fey energy as you were likely to find, and when the Fey and the Dweomer started rubbing elbows . . .

Pop!
One link of the chain winked out of existence, and Tyvian was suddenly free. He immediately dropped the screaming routine and charged the Defender coming at him with a bucket of water. The prospect of being bear-­hugged by a flaming criminal caused the Defender to stagger backward—­he dropped the bucket, but Tyvian wasn't interested in dousing the flames just yet. What he wanted was the other thing the Defender dropped: his firepike.

He snatched it up and whirled on the other Defenders on the floor of the courtroom and began discharging the enchanted weapon in random directions, sending blazing bolts of Fey energy streaking across the room. The Defenders, following their training, dropped to one knee and ducked their heads. This was a good idea if facing sorcerous weaponry—­the mageglass of their helmets and arms would protect them from a lot. What probably nobody realized was that men in this position made excellent stepping-­stones.

Tyvian charged the closest Defender, leapt onto the man's shoulders and, just as the fellow was getting up to throw him off, leapt again, aiming toward the edge of the nearest pulpit. From there it was a simple pull-­up and there he was—­standing in the pulpit of Judge Kendra Forsayth, while on fire, while holding a firepike.

To all outward appearances, the Master of the Dweomer seemed to vanish in a puff of smoke, but Tyvian knew better—­she'd just sped herself up and run off faster than the eye could see. He could tell because the door she fled through had just banged open as though hit by a charging bull. The judge had just provided him his escape route
and
left her ledger where it was—­between Tyvian's legs. He snatched up the ledger and stuffed it underneath his flame-­resistant doublet before it could singe. He then took one moment to survey the gallery, even as firepike blasts from below hit the walls around him, and blew them all a good-­bye kiss. It was received with the kind of gaping astonishment he had anticipated.

Then came the hard part.

As soon as he left the courtroom, the ring clamped down on his hand hard enough to make him wail in pain. This was, largely, what the firepike was for—­it was a crutch to lean on as he staggered through the judge's chambers and into the adjoining corridor, blinded with the righ­teous fury of a ring that wanted him prosecuted for the crimes that he very much
had
committed.

He kept moving, as steadily as he could manage, his right hand curled into a palsied fist as he burned both from within and from without. He banged into tables, tapestries, and door frames, leaving behind him a trail of fire that, while unmistakable to pursuers, would make their pursuit itself rather hazardous until they could wrangle a mage up there to douse the flames.

Tyvian heard shouts behind him, but they were the panicked cries of ­people trying to escape an old castle that was fast on its way to burning to the ground. He pressed on, his vision shrinking into a tunnel of fire, smoke, and the shadowy contours of the stone walls around him. His breathing grew labored. “I can do this,” He muttered. “I planned for this.”

Of course, when he had been lying awake in Derby the night after he poisoned that first Quiet Man, this entire plan seemed less painful. How did one rescue somebody turned to stone? You got inside Keeper's Court to steal their Rite of Recovery from the sentencing judge's ledger. How did one get inside Keeper's Court? Well, you got yourself arrested and brought to trial. How did you get yourself out of the courtroom and not turned to stone? Well, you lit yourself on fire.

But how did you keep the ring from ruining the whole affair by torturing him into submission?

Well, he hadn't thought that part out yet. The current plan called for just toughing it out. That part of the plan wasn't going well.

Tyvian felt the heat building beneath his jacket—­the enchantment placed there was almost ready to give out. He was currently near the ancient south tower of Keeper's Court, which was his destination anyway. He threw himself on a stone staircase and stripped off his burning doublet, casting the thing in the direction of a large and antique rug, which promptly caught on fire.

The ring kept up its assault on his body, making it feel as though he actually was on fire. He had to check his hand to make sure, given how much of this place was going up in flames. It wasn't—­just the ring's old tricks. Tyvian took a deep breath and tried to rise, ledger still stuffed under one arm. The ring cramped his joints with agony and he sank back to the stairs. Smoke was growing thicker and thicker in the air. The burning rug was now an inferno, catching on some of the support beams from the floor below, he guessed. The air became thick and hard to breathe.

“Dammit,” he growled at his hand. “What, you're going to make me
die
here? What about Myreon, eh? Doesn't
she
deserve justice, you bull-­headed trinket?”

Nothing changed. Somewhere nearby, Tyvian heard shouts, but these were organized—­the shouts of military personnel. Defenders come to battle the blaze. Slowly, he began to drag himself down the stairs, one by one, headed for the base of the South Tower. It was slow going. They would catch him long before he got there at this rate.

“I'm trying to save Myreon, you stupid ring!” he screamed. “Release me!”

His answer was nothing but more pain.

Tyvian pitched himself into a roll—­if he couldn't walk down the stairs, he'd fall down them. He wound up bruised and battered at their base, deep in the basement of the South Tower—­the oldest part of Keeper's Court.

Even though he was so close to his goal, he could not rise. The ring bound him to the floor with cramps that bunched his muscles and ligaments into painful, inert lumps. Above him, he heard footsteps on the stairs. They were nearly on him.

What the hell did the bloody ring want from him? Was this it? It wanted him turned to stone alongside Myreon, left to rot until a decade after everyone forgot his name? If his mother was right, and the ring was some kind of storage unit for his better self, what kind of better self was this? What was it missing?

He wracked his brain for a way out.
Why am I escaping? Why am I doing this? If it'
s just for me, then the ring won't let me go, is that it? It wants to know I'm sincere about saving Myreon—­that I'm doing it for her and not for myself.

“Fine!” he groaned, “It's for her, okay? Are you happy now? I'm saving another damsel, dammit! Isn't that what you bloody want?”

No, Tyvian realized, that isn't what it wants. That isn't what I want. It wants me to make a decision: what do I, Tyvian Reldamar, think of Myreon Alafarr? Are my intentions pure?

The steps drew closer—­some mirror man, sword drawn, advancing carefully toward where a dangerous criminal might be hiding. Not much time left to dither.

Tyvian had never been much for deep introspection, particularly in personal matters. He was a man of action, not of thought. He tried to calm his racing mind and purge the adrenaline from his limbs. He had to think calmly.

Ever since he heard of Myreon's arrest and punishment, the ring had been there, throbbing slowly in the background of his daily life, like an old stubbed toe. That, though, wasn't why he had come—­he'd learned to put up with such petty discomforts so that he barely noticed them. Then there was the knowledge that this was all a lure to bring him back, and he had told himself that he'd come to spite his mother and nothing else, but that also wasn't true. Instead, for him, he recalled that moment when he found Myreon's body in Daer Trondor. He tried to feel what he had felt when he kissed her—­when he felt a portion of his life flow into hers like liquid fire. What was that thing that had given him that power?

Respect. Perhaps even admiration. Perhaps something harder for him to pin down, something that defied his description: the simple, sure knowledge that a world without Myreon Alafarr was a world lessened, and not just generally—­lessened for
him
specifically. “Is that too selfish of me, ring?” Tyvian gasped, trying to crawl away from the approaching steps. “To want her alive and free? Is that too much to ask?”

Tyvian's pain crested some invisible ridge and began to slide away down the other side. Strength flowed back into his limbs in a torrent.

He sprang to his feet in time to see a mirror man with a rapier poised to attack. Tyvian snatched a feylamp from the wall and threw it at him, then turned to run, snatching up the ledger as he went. His legs seemed to be weightless—­he felt like he could fly.

The South Tower of Keeper's Court was a fat, ancient structure dating to the days when the courthouse had been a keep for the Saldorian Kings of old and the Block was a big stone that sat in the open air before the keep's walls. It now served as the court's archives, and this made it two things: firstly, it was designed to be fireproof, and secondly, it contained a siege cistern in the depths of its ancient basements. That second part—­that was his objective.

Tyvian fled downward, deeper into the old tower. He flew down old spiral staircases and threw up trapdoors, going deeper, ever deeper, into that ancient keep.

“Reldamar!” Androlli shouted from somewhere above. “There's no escape! Give up!”

He got to the lowest point—­he could feel the dampness on his fire-­baked skin. Here there were no scrolls and no books, only ancient shelves of dust and forgotten artifacts. Tyvian raced past them, kicking off his boots as he went. He grabbed some oilskin from a shelf, originally intended to protect paper from mildewing, and wrapped it tightly around the ledger to prevent water from ruining its pages.

“Reldamar!”
Androlli's voice echoed in the distance.

There it was—­a cistern, the surface of the water black and calm. It would be a hell of a swim, and mostly underwater, but if he made it, he would come out beneath the docks along the Narrow Mouth. He tucked the ledger into his shirt and took several deep breaths. Ordinarily, this would be madness—­suicide by drowning in some ancient black tunnel. The ring, though, would give him the edge. He would make it; the ring loved it when he played the hero.

He dove in and the cold blackness of the water surrounded him. There was no light, but the thought of his coming triumph, burning ahead of him in his mind's eye, was brighter than any sunshine.