Bared Blade (31 page)

Aral?

Triss’s voice in my mind startled me out of the world of ideas and back into the one where my problems wore uniforms and carried death warrants with my name on them.

Yes?

Triss had shifted, leaning back so that he could look into my eyes.
When are you going to drop the silence spell? This thinking words at you is much more work than speaking them would be.

Is it?
And in asking the question I realized that it was. Mind speech must have something of magic to it, because using it felt a bit like spell casting and drew energy from the well of my soul.

With a thought and a gesture I dismissed my dome of silence. “Better?”

“Much.” Triss visibly relaxed, lowering his head back to rest on my shoulder. “How are you?” The words came out low and urgent, yet soft, as though he were afraid I might shatter.

How was I? I ran my palms over my face, feeling for deformities or other surprises. It felt good, smooth skin and stubble. Though I wouldn’t know what I looked like until I found myself some time and a mirror, it felt pretty much like my old face. Even the scabs and raw patches from my burns were gone. Externally I was doing fine. Of course, internally I felt like I’d been dragged behind a delivery cart for eight hours. It was a strange mix of wrung out and renewed.

“I’ll live,” I finally said.

“Good. I had my doubts there for a while.”

“How did you do it?” I asked.

“I don’t know really. It was like breaking down a barrier within my own head, a barrier made from my own substance—pain and blood, and nightmare giving way
suddenly to wakefulness. I wanted so badly to reach you. I was beating at the invisible wall of the spell with my wings and claws, trying to cross into your half of the diagram with everything I had.”

Triss squeezed me with his wings again, hard enough to take my breath away. “But I just couldn’t get through, not even by following the line of shadow that always connects us. I was watching you die and I couldn’t bear it, and suddenly I thought of the way Tien Lun had spoken into my head. How she had torn something in my mind. I looked for the place she had opened and though I didn’t find it, I did find a new place to push. I can’t really describe it further than that except to say that it lay at the heart of what makes you and I an us. Somewhere in the interweaving of familiar bond, shadow link, and love there was a barrier that is no more.”

I’m glad,
I thought at him.

So am I.

“Now can we help my mommy?” asked Scheroc.

“I don’t know,” I said.

Where
was
the justice in this situation? I didn’t know that either. Nor who really deserved to get their hands on the Kothmerk. All I knew for certain was that justice wasn’t on the side of the people who’d imprisoned Fei and used her to set a trap for me and my Dyad friend. That, and that I wanted to get the damned ring out of my city.

“I don’t know,” I said again. Then I pulled Qethar’s pebble from my pocket. “But there’s one way to find out.”

“But not here,” said Triss.

“No, of course not. For a number of reasons. I was thinking of someplace high up and close to water. I want the Durkoth out of his element and off balance for this conversation, and I think I know just the place.”

“
H
ow
do I look?” I asked.

Harad leaned in close. “Different enough that I’d not have let you in if you knocked on the front door of my library.”

I grinned. “Then it’s a good thing I broke in like usual.”

“Yes, my wards knew you where I would not. This is, I presume, your response to those rather distressing wanted posters that have gone up all over the city. It seems a little drastic.…”

I nodded grimly, and felt a faint cool stirring across the back of my neck at the motion—Scheroc had insisted on coming along and I couldn’t think of any way short of a binding to keep the little elemental spirit from doing whatever it wanted. Since bindings range from uncomfortable to excruciating for the bound, depending on their natures, that’d be pretty much tantamount to declaring war on Fei. Not really an option I wanted to pursue even if she was locked up in a royal dungeon somewhere.

I was just trying to decide whether I should mention the
creature to Harad, and if so, how much I should tell the old librarian, when he preempted me. “Did you know that you have Kaelin Fei’s familiar trailing along at your back?”

“Uh, yes?” Good answer there, Aral.

“That’s a story I’ll want to hear more of at some point. But I suppose that if you’re all right with having it following you around, it’s not a problem for me. Just keep it away from the stacks and any loose paper. The things make a dreadful mess.”

I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised that Harad would be aware of the qamasiin. He was, after all, one of the most powerful sorcerers I’d ever met, and the Ismere Library was both his passion and his home. I did wonder how he knew about its relationship to Fei—that was a story
I
would have loved to hear more about.

Founded nearly four hundred years ago by a Kadeshi merchant-adventurer who had headquartered his operations in Tien, the Ismere had grown to house one of the finest collections of books and scrolls anywhere north of the Sylvani Empire. We stood now in the third-floor reading room, my usual point of entry into the private lending facility—via the roof of the neighboring Ismere Club and a little pick work on the balcony door locks.

The Ismere was much better stocked than the Royal Library of Tien, in large part because it had never fallen foul of the sorts of censorship and purges the latter facility had faced over the years. More than one Zhani king or queen had tried to censor the Ismere as well, but they’d never managed to get far, mostly destroying inferior or badly damaged copies the library had intended to get rid of anyway. It’s hard to force one of the great mages to do anything they don’t want to do, and being a great mage was one of the minimum—if secret—qualifications for becoming chief librarian of the Ismere.

“While we’re on the topic of interesting stories, Aral,” said Harad, “what
have
you done to yourself? And how? I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone manage that sort of bone-deep
facial reshaping before, short of a full-on shape change, though I can see several ways that one might attempt it.”

“Actually, I’m not entirely sure about the what. It’s dark out there and I haven’t exactly had access to a good mirror. The how’s a longer tale than I have time for if I go into the level of detail I know you’re going to want. So, if you don’t mind, I’ll save that part for a later date. In the meantime”—I pointed at my face and smiled—“I don’t suppose…”

Harad nodded. “I think I can manage that.”

With a sweep of his hand and a mumbled word, Harad conjured a full-length mirror clearer than the finest silver. The librarian was an old friend, my oldest in one way, at a shade over six hundred years. His span had been greatly extended by his bond with whatever slow-aging familiar companioned him—the life of a mage and his familiar always tend toward the longer of the two. I didn’t know the nature of Harad’s familiar because he’d never volunteered that information, and I knew better than to push, but I had no doubt it was something at least as rare and exalted as one of the great dragons.

“Thank you.” I stepped up to the magic mirror and gave myself a careful looking over.

We hadn’t done too bad a job, Triss and I. The face wasn’t the one I’d been born with, of course, but it did all the things my old one had, if that makes any sense. I’ve always been a bit boring where it comes to looks, medium brown hair, medium brown eyes, skin somewhere between the dark side of light and the light side of dark, features neither ugly nor particularly handsome, medium build.… I
am
a touch on the tall side, and certainly my training has put a lot of muscle on that frame, but really, barring the wanted posters, I’m not the type who draws a lot of second looks.

The temple masters had often noted that very lack of distinction was one of my greatest assets as a Blade. The face looking back out of the mirror at me now fit that same old bill in a new and equally boring sort of way, which is exactly what I’d hoped to achieve. The exact details aren’t
terribly important, but I was pleased with the way we’d managed to tone down the Varyanness of my appearance without really making me look too much like I came from anywhere else either.

If I’d had to make a guess at my apparent ethnicity, I’d have said my new face belonged in the Magelands where there was a lot more blending of bloodlines than almost anywhere else in the eleven kingdoms. Anyone from anywhere could claim Mageland citizenship if they tested positive for either of the mage’s gifts. An awful lot of refugees from conflicts and purges in the other ten kingdoms had ended up there because of that.

It made for the densest population of sorcerers anywhere in the east, though there were plenty of citizens who had no magical gifts at all, both native and immigrant, as there were other paths to citizenship. It also meant that mostly the rest of the world left the Magelands the hell alone. It wasn’t smart to piss off a population that could throw a thousand and one kinds of spells at you on a moment’s notice.

“Well?” Triss asked after a while. He sounded nervous. “What do you think?”

“That we did a good job, my friend.”

He let out a sigh of obvious relief. “I’m so glad. I was worried about the parts that I did. I don’t see you like your fellow humans see you, and I didn’t know if that was going to make for some horrible mistake that you would never forgive me for.”

I laughed. “Triss, there’s nothing you could do to me that I couldn’t forgive after all we’ve been through, though I am glad you didn’t put my nose back on upside down.”

Harad smiled. “I don’t know. It would lend you some of the character that you’ve always lacked.”

“In my business, character is a dirty word, and you know that, old man.”

“And yet, your Master Kelos with his eye patch and tattoos was quite the visible one in his day. And that beard…”

Harad had, once upon a time, been brought in as a teacher of the art of deception for my order. That was nearly three
hundred years ago, when he’d been involved with an acting company in Varya, one in a long line of careers that he’d taken on over his more than half a millennium of life. It was that association with the Blades which had prevented him from frying me like a bug the first time I broke into his library some eleven years in the past. Well, his wards really, as they’d been keyed to allow the entrance of anyone companioned by a Shade, a condition since narrowed to be specific to me.

“Don’t go waving Kelos around as an example at me,” I said. “You know very well that he always put in a glass eye, covered his tattoos with makeup, and shaved off the beard when he went out on a mission. The more flamboyant aspects of his appearance were something he used to draw attention to what he wanted people to look for when they thought he might be stalking them. It was a stage magician’s trick, one I imagine that was originally drawn from the tool bag you created for the order.”

“There is that. But come, you’ve said you’re short on time and I think you’ve done sufficient homage to the niceties. What is it that you want from me in such a hurry. Questions answered? A banned book to read, like the one you needed when you got sucked into the Marchon affair? Is it something that we can work out over a drink? I’ve picked up a bottle of that whiskey you favor since you won’t drink my tea.”

“I’m afraid I’ll have to pass on the drink.” Though I felt a distinct pang of regret at the thought. “And it’s neither answers nor a book that I’m hoping you can provide.”

“Well, if it’s not information you want, I have to say a library is a strange choice of venue. What
are
you here for?”

“I am looking to have a little talk and learn a few things. Just not from you. I need to speak with a Durkoth and I wanted to borrow your riverside grand balcony for a bit.”

Harad blinked several times, the only real exhibition of surprise I’d ever seen him make. “It seems an odd place at an odd time, but I think it can be arranged. Do you mind if I ask, why here?”

“Aral thinks we might have to jump in the river and swim for our lives,” Triss said in a dry tone. “Which would be the third time in as many days we’ve done something of the kind. It’s getting to be almost as much a habit as the whiskey, and about as good for him.”

Harad nodded. “Ah, you want to oppose earth with water and air. A sensible precaution, and one that answers half my question…”

“Yours is about the only balcony around that both overhangs the river from such a height and doesn’t require us to focus at least half of our attention on keeping an eye out for the rightful landlords. I’ve only just shed the face on the wanted posters and I’d rather not have a new set drawn up because I’ve been spotted on some baron’s private balcony. I know it’s an imposition and not without some risk.…”

“Tell me a bit more about this Durkoth,” said Harad.

I was impatient, but if I wanted Harad’s help, I knew I had to give him what he wanted. I quickly filled him in on my earlier encounter with Qethar and as many of the surrounding events as I could manage in a few minutes. More than once during that time an impatient Scheroc tugged at my hair or the folds of my shirt. At the end of my explanation, Harad asked to see Qethar’s pebble, so I handed it over. He examined the small stone closely, going so far as tasting it before finally giving it back to me.