Defiant Peaks (The Hadrumal Crisis) (50 page)

Blackpits Lane, Col

33rd of Aft-Winter

H
OSH WAS GLAD
the captain had given him his sword. Keeping one hand on the hilt and using the other to stop his hood falling victim to the gusting wind meant that he couldn’t succumb to temptation and explore his broken face with curious fingertips.

Had the magewoman truly noticed a difference? Was there an improvement beyond the easing of his pain? Surely Jilseth had nothing to gain by a kindly untruth. Besides, in Hosh’s experience, wizards didn’t deal much in kindness.

He stole sideways glances whenever they slowed for Jilseth to make certain of her bearings. Hosh still struggled to reconcile her modest height and unremarkable appearance with his mum’s tale of the magewoman’s astonishing spells wielded in Halferan’s defence in that last stand against the corsairs, before her magic had concealed their escape.

‘This way.’ Jilseth led him down a lane of shoe-makers’ workshops.

Then again, Hosh reflected, Anskal the Mandarkin had looked like some pathetic beggar; stunted, starveling and filthy. His savage, selfish magic had been as astounding as it had proved appalling. The wizard had held life as cheap as any of the corsairs. More cheaply.

Even corsairs as vicious as Ducah with his murderous sword, or as crafty as Nifai with his overseer’s whip, had been loyal to their allies. Time and again, Anskal had let one of the mageborn Archipelagans whom he had enslaved die an agonized death simply to see the survivors learn a brutal lesson.

What magic was Jilseth planning to work with a corpse? Hosh didn’t even want to speculate, thrusting ghastly imaginings away. As he followed her dutifully across another brick-paved square, he wished, now that he could be sure of privacy in his own thoughts, that Mentor Garewin or one of the other Col adepts knew some Artifice to uncover this dead Soluran’s secrets.

Artifice’s softly spoken enchantments were so quietly reassuring. Over these past few days in the Red Library, there had been no garish, eerie magelight crackling out of nowhere in harsh, unnatural colours, or blinding whiteness as menacing as lightning from a storm cloud and disappearing just as swiftly.

Adepts were no different to anyone else. That was to say, Hosh allowed, these mentors who were healing him had a marked aptitude for scholarship which few folk would share, as well as sharper wits than any five in a hundred met in a marketplace.

But they hadn’t been born with arcane abilities to steal away the air that a man needed to breathe, to summon up water to drown someone where they stood or fire to burn them alive. Artificers couldn’t open up a gaping chasm to swallow someone whole, closing up the earth again to leave no sign that someone had been murdered.

Hosh had heard any number of such stories in Halferan’s tavern, tantalizingly terrifying as well as comfortably set in long-lost days of old. But now he had seen such magic for himself, along with the guardsmen from Halferan, Antathele, Licanin and Tallat. The tales now spreading like fear of spotted fever along Caladhria’s highways and byways were rooted in reality with dates and places and names.

‘That must be the rooming house.’ Jilseth halted at the end of a short lane curving down a shallow slope.

There was only one building matching the mentors’ description; four storeys with a row of seven windows on the upper floors and a wide double door in the middle at street level. Though Hosh reckoned his mum would quibble over calling this respectable accommodation. The green door was in sore need of new paint and the cream awnings over the windows were stained with soot and weighed down with dead leaves.

‘How will we know which room he’s in?’

Jilseth waved that away. ‘I’ll know, unless there’s more than one corpse under that roof, but I’m sure that’s unlikely.’

Hosh fervently hoped so. ‘Should we wait for the—for the baron?’

‘Let’s see if we can get inside first.’ The magewoman started walking towards the green door so Hosh was forced to fall into step behind her, one hand on the captain’s sword.

As Jilseth knocked on the door Hosh peered through the grimy glass pane beside the weathered wood. Seeing the rooming house’s keeper bustling down the tiled hall, he hastily retreated.

The housekeeper opened the door in an apron so stained that Hosh’s mum would long since have given up hope of boiling it white and cut it up for rags.

‘Good day to you?’ The woman’s greeting clearly included a demand that they explain themselves.

‘Good day.’ Jilseth inclined her head politely. ‘We are here to see Master Estinesh, a Soluran residing here.’

Hosh stood behind the magewoman, doing his best to keep his face obscured. For a change, he was more concerned that the housekeeper would see his apprehension rather than gawp at his injuries. If this woman escorted them to the Soluran’s door, surely she would find his dead body? What would the magewoman do about that?

He had no chance to ask as the housekeeper led them along the mud-smeared hall and up the scuffed and dusty stairs. When they reached the second floor the slatternly woman knocked on the third door facing the front. ‘Master Estinesh?’

‘Enter!’

Hosh couldn’t conceal his start of surprise at hearing that peremptory bark from within. Thankfully the housekeeper had her back to him.

Jilseth shot a warning glance over her shoulder, one finger raised to her lips as she gestured with her other hand towards the room’s closed door. As the housekeeper turned the knob, the door opened.

‘Oh!’ Jilseth dropped a handful of coins.

Even allowing for the bare floorboards, the noise was so loud that Hosh was sure some magic was doubling their clatter.

‘Let me help you.’ The housekeeper stooped low, sharp-eyed and scooping up fallen silver like a hen pecking corn.

‘Thank you.’ Jilseth fluttered helpless hands at the same time as giving Hosh a meaningful glare and jerking her head towards the half-open door.

He quickly went to stand blocking the housekeeper’s view as the woman straightened up to hand Jilseth her money. Though Hosh didn’t dare turn to see what might lie behind him.

‘Thank you, and please, take something for your trouble.’ Jilseth pressed a coin into the woman’s hand. At the same time, the magewoman pushed Hosh into the room and closed the door so deftly that she cut off the housekeeper’s thanks in mid-sentence.

Hosh stared at the table beneath the window where the Soluran sat in a chair, as motionless as any shrine statue.

‘It’s an illusion, like his voice.’ As Jilseth looked up from counting her coin, the unmoving figure vanished.

Hosh looked around the meagre lodging. Plastered walls were bare of decoration and no rug softened the floorboards. Apart from the table and chair, only a small clothes press stood beside the door and the narrow bed which would preclude a couple sleeping together in any comfort, whatever else they might do on the lumpy mattress.

A dead body appeared amid the rumpled sheets and blankets although the Soluran wore breeches and shirt rather than night clothes. Hosh became aware of an unpleasant odour, something between a sick room and an infant’s soiled swaddling. He recalled how slaves had lost control of bladder and bowels when he’d seen them flogged to death on the galleys.

‘He lay down to work his Artifice in comfort,’ Jilseth observed. ‘That is fortunate. If he had fallen to thrash on these floorboards someone could well have complained about the commotion and discovered him. It seems he died hard,’ she added with some satisfaction.

Hosh looked at the man’s bitten lip, blood clotting on his chin. What would the housekeeper have thought if she had discovered the Soluran’s corpse? That he had suffered some seizure as he slept?

Perhaps Artifice wasn’t so kindly a magic. Could anyone tell if some murderous adept was responsible for an unexpected death? At least it was plain to see when wizardry killed someone.

‘Good.’ Jilseth was by the window, looking into the street. She gestured at the door and Hosh heard the solid click of the lock securing itself. ‘Wait here.’

Before Hosh could ask what she intended, the magewoman vanished. He had barely blinked in astonishment before she reappeared with Corrain at her side, her hand on his shoulder. The captain was cradling a battered cooking pot with a broad-necked flagon inside it, its stopper secured with a lumpy smear of wax.

The captain acknowledged Hosh with a nod and jerked his head towards the door. ‘Don’t let anyone in.’

‘I don’t imagine we’ll be disturbed,’ Jilseth said drily. ‘Mistress Housekeeper won’t wish to account for the silver she pocketed from the floor.’

‘What—? Never mind.’ Corrain abandoned his own question, contemplating the dead Soluran on the bed, his expression bleak.

‘At least you won some justice for Master Micaran,’ Hosh ventured.

‘Much good that’ll do his family. He’s still dead,’ Corrain said harshly.

Shrugging that off, he turned to Hosh and pointed to the clothes press. ‘Search that while I search the body and the bed. Madam Mage, see what’s in his cloak pockets if you please?’

He jerked his head towards the Soluran’s cloak lying draped over the chair before he stooped over the corpse and ripped the dead man’s shirt open.

Hosh opened the clothes press and pulled out clean shirts and under linen. He shook the garments but there was nothing hidden within their folds. He did the same with the man’s breeches, searching their pockets for good measure. Nothing. Hosh examined the two jerkins hung on the back of the door inside and out, running the seams and hems through his fingers.

‘Madam Mage—’ He turned to Jilseth, similarly checking the cloak for anything stitched within the cloth.

Corrain knelt on the floor, one hand pushing the dead Soluran towards the wall as he thrust his other arm between the flock-filled mattress and the bed boards. A travelling bag hauled out from beneath the bed already lay open, revealing the dead man’s razor, strop and mirror and a few pots of medicaments.

He grimaced at the sordid smell. ‘Nothing. What now?’

‘I work some necromancy.’ Dropping the cloak onto the chair, the magewoman contemplated the corpse.

Corrain couldn’t hide his instant of revulsion. ‘Necromancy?’

‘It will show us his life before he travelled here.’ Jilseth looked at Corrain and Hosh. ‘You need not stay if it distresses you.’

Before Hosh could answer, Corrain squared his shoulders. ‘What are you going to do?’

Jilseth studied the corpse with a faint crease between her brows. ‘I normally work this spell with some salvaged bone or other fragment to discover how someone died. I wonder if I should cut off his hand.’

Hosh couldn’t decide which was more unnerving; the thought of the lady wizard handling such carrion or her matter-of-fact tone, as composed as his mum discussing cutting up a woollen dress length to sew a new gown.

‘Which one?’ Corrain drew his belt-knife, his face twisted with distaste.

‘Let’s try something else first.’ Jilseth went over to the cooking pot. As she lifted out the glazed flagon, the wax melted away and she poured the contents into the pot, stopper and all. ‘Open the window, if you please.’

Hosh watched with growing unease as she carried the pot carefully across to the bed. He breathed a little more easily as Col’s incessant breezes scoured the oppressive smell from the room, though as he caught Corrain’s eye, they shared a silent moment of mutual queasiness.

Jilseth tugged the Soluran’s limp hand free of the tangling blankets, to let it dangle over the side to hang inside the cooking pot. She nodded with satisfaction. ‘Good. His fingertips just reach the oil.’

She settled herself on the floorboards, sitting cross-legged in a most unladylike fashion with her skirts tucked around her.

‘Madam Mage, what wizardry—’ But as Hosh summoned up the courage to ask what she was doing, he couldn’t frame a question.

Jilseth leaned forward and cupped her hands around the battered pot. ‘I will search out his most significant recent encounters.’

Barely a handful of moments later, Hosh’s eyes began to water. He coughed as the acrid bite of burning oil seared the back of his throat and nose, most of all on the injured side of his face. This was worse than the stink of soiled bed linen.

Smoke and steam rose from the cooking pot. Even without amber threads of magelight weaving through the vapour, this could only be wizardry with no fire beneath the pot. The oil bubbled softly within yet Jilseth pressed her hands against the sides. If she hadn’t been mageborn she would be weeping over agonising blistered palms.

A swirl of steam, smoke and dull gold magelight drifted to float above the dead Soluran’s face. The haze spread but rather than dissipating like a natural mist, it thickened. Soon the cloud was so opaque that Hosh couldn’t see the pale wall behind it.

Deep within the darkness, golden magelight coalesced into a shining sphere no bigger than an apple. It swelled into a globe which would have filled both Hosh’s hands. Colour and movement appeared; tiny figures veiled by swirling mist, a flickering succession of indistinct glimpses. Then the grey haze thinned to no more than the glistening sheen on dirty glass.

Hosh studied the vision of some distant room. It was night; unshuttered windows were black mirrors reflecting the candle-filled sconces around the circle of the unpainted stone wall. The single narrow door was barred from inside.