Fate's Edge (5 page)

“The Pyramid of Ptah. The Egyptian pyramids started as tombs and slowly progressed into houses of worship and learning. This particular pyramid, the second largest in West Egypt, is devoted to Ptah, God of Architects and Skilled Craftsmen. Of all creation gods of West Egypt, he is particularly venerated because of his intellectual approach. In essence, if Ptah thinks of it, it comes into being.”

“A useful power,” Kaldar said.

“Very. Ptah’s pyramid is the center of research for many magic disciplines. It’s the place where discoveries are made and cutting-edge technology is produced. That’s why Egyptians guard it like the apple of their eye.”

Erwin touched the console, and the walls of the pyramid vanished, revealing its inner structure—a complex maze of passageways.

“This is just what we know about,” Erwin said. “The defenses of the pyramid are constantly evolving. It is seeded with traps, puzzles, impossible doors, and other delightful things designed to separate intruders from the burden of their lives. The Egyptians informed us that the thieves entered here, at two in the morning.” Erwin picked a narrow metal tube and pointed at the passageway shooting off from the main entrance. The hallway lit up with a bright shade of yellow. “It’s a service hallway. It’s typically locked at night, and the lock is considered to be tamperproof.”

“Until now.”

“A fair observation. The Egyptians estimate that a talented picklock could open this lock in ten to fifteen minutes. The entrance is extensively patrolled. The thieves had a window of eight seconds, during which they opened the door, slipped inside the passageway, and closed and locked it behind them.”

“They locked it?”

Erwin nodded.

Four seconds to open, four seconds to lock. That was crazy. To break into the Pyramid of Ptah would take incredible talent. Kaldar had looked into it when he was younger and the family was desperate. If someone had asked him this morning if it could be done, he would’ve said no.

“Then they proceeded down this hallway, leaving three distinct sets of footprints, two large and one small.”

“Two for muscle and the cat burglar,” Kaldar guessed.

“Probably.” Erwin swept the length of the hallway with his pointer, causing sections of the image to light up. “They opened impossible locks in record time. They avoided all of the traps. They escaped detection and ended up here, bypassing both treasury here and armory here.” The pointer fixed on a small room, then lit up rooms to the right and left of it. “They took a wooden box containing the device and walked out of the pyramid the way they came. In and out in under twenty minutes.

“That’s impossible.”

“Our Egyptian colleagues are of the same opinion. Unfortunately, the facts have no regard for their collective sanity.”

Kaldar frowned at the pyramid. “Was this the shortest route they could’ve taken to the room?”

“Yes.”

An enterprising thief would’ve done the research and broken into the treasury. A terrorist would’ve gone for the armory and the weapons within. But these three went directly to the room, took their prize, and escaped. Someone had hired them to do this job and provided them with the plans of the pyramid. Only a heavy hitter would have access to this sort of intelligence. The Mirror. Or the Hand. That would explain why a thief with a talent of this caliber took a job for hire. The Hand’s methods of persuasion rarely involved money. Mostly they showed you your child or your lover strapped to a chair and promised to send you a piece of her every hour until you agreed to do whatever they wanted.

There it was, finally, his chance of a direct confrontation. He would make them pay.

Erwin was watching him.

“What happened after the thieves left the pyramid?” Kaldar asked.

“They disappeared off the face of the world.” Erwin fiddled with the console, and the pyramid vanished, replaced by an aerial image of a small town. “This is the town of Adriana, population forty thousand. Two hundred and twenty leagues north, across the border, in our territory. A small, quaint settlement, famous for being the first place Adrian’s fleet disembarked after crossing the ocean. It’s a popular destination for school tours. Six hours and ten minutes after the thieves left the pyramid, Adriana’s prized fountain exploded. The city crew, first on the scene, became violently sick. They reported catching ghost insects on their skin, hot flashes, freezes, temporary blindness, and vomiting.”

The reaction to Hand’s magic. Kaldar grimaced. The Mirror relied on gadgets to supplement their agents’ natural talents, while the Hand employed magic modification. Officially, all countries of the West Continent abided by an agreement that limited how far the human body could be twisted by magic. The Dukedom of Louisiana made all the right noises and quietly manufactured freaks by the dozen. Men with foot-long needles on their backs, women who shot acid from their hands, things that used to be human and now were just a tangled mess of fangs and claws.

Magic augmentation came with a price. Some agents lost their humanity completely, some held on to it, but all emitted their own particular brand of unnatural magic. If you were sensitive to magic, the first exposure made you violently sick. He’d experienced it firsthand, and he didn’t care to repeat it.

Erwin straightened. “The Egyptians believe the Hand hired the thieves to steal the object and scheduled the trade in Adriana, where things went badly for both parties. Your wyvern is on standby. With luck and good wind, you should be in Adriana in an hour. After you review the scene, I’d imagine you will have a better idea of the supplies you’ll need. Please stop at the Home Office, and we’ll provide you everything you require. This assignment is rated first priority. Should you be captured, Adrianglia will disavow any knowledge of you and your mission.”

“But you’ll miss me?”

Erwin permitted himself a small smile. “Kaldar, I never miss.”

Ha! “What’s the nature of the stolen device?” Kaldar asked.

Erwin raised his eyebrows. “That’s the best part.”

 

KALDAR surveyed the sea of rubble, enclosed by a line of fluorescent paint and guarded by a dozen undersheriffs. Before him stretched what had once been the Center Plaza: a circle of clear ground, which until this morning had been paved with large square blocks. The blocks had radiated like the spokes of a wheel from the tall round fountain in the shape of a pair of dolphins leaping out from the water basin. He’d picked up a tourist brochure on his way to the scene of the crime. It showed a lovely picture of the fountain.

Now the fountain lay in ruins. It wasn’t simply knocked down, it was shattered, as if the dolphins had exploded from the inside out. Not satisfied with destroying the fountain, the perpetrator had wrenched the stone blocks around it out of the ground and hurled them across the plaza. The brochure stated that each block weighed upwards of fifty pounds. Looking at the giant chunks of stone, Kaldar didn’t doubt it. A small tea vendor’s wagon must’ve gotten in the way of the barrage, because it lay in shambles, blue-green boards poking out sadly from under the stones.

Blood stained the rubble. Gobs of flesh lay scattered here and there, some looking like they could possibly be human and others sporting weird bunches of fish bladders strung together like grapes. About ten feet to the left, a chunk of an oversized, flesh-colored tentacle curled around a piece of cloth. Long strands of yellowish slime covered the entire scene. And to top it all off, the slime stank like days-old vomit, harsh and sour. The deputies downwind, on the opposite side of the ruined plaza, valiantly tried not to gag.

The tall, broad bruiser, who was the sheriff of Adriana, was giving him an evil eye. His name was Kaminski, and he was clearly having doubts about the wisdom of Kaldar’s presence at his crime scene. Kaldar couldn’t blame him. His skin was at least two shades darker than most faces in the crowd. He wore brown leather, fitted neither tight nor too loose, and he looked lean, flexible, and fast, like a man who scaled tall fences early in the morning.

The sheriff stared at him. He could just go over and introduce himself, but what fun would that be?

Kaldar grinned. The sheriff’s blond sidekick began weaving his way through the crowd toward him.

Strange pair, these two, but probably highly effective. And respected, too. They didn’t bother with putting up any barriers, not even a rope. Just a line of paint around the crime scene and a dozen undersheriffs, but the crowd stayed way back.

Cops were the same everywhere, Kaldar reflected. In the Broken, they called you “sir” and Tasered you, while in the Weird, they called you “master” and hit you with low-level flash magic, but the street look—that wary, evaluating, flat look in their eyes—was the same everywhere. Cops noticed everything, and few of them were stupid. He had committed too many crimes in both worlds to underestimate them.

The blond undersheriff stopped before him. “I’m Undersheriff Rodwell. Your name?”

“Kaldar Mar.”

“Do you find the destruction of Adrianglian landmarks humorous, Master Mar? Perhaps you would like to visit our jail and spend some time in our jail cell to collect your thoughts and explain to all of us what is so funny?”

“I’d love to,” Kaldar said. “But my employer might take an issue with that.”

“Who is your employer?”

Kaldar sent a spark of magic through his spine. A faint sheen rolled over the earring in his left ear. It dripped down, forming a dull tear hanging from the hoop. The tear brightened, and Rodwell stared at his own reflection in a mirrored surface.

“Kaldar Mar, agent of the Adrianglian Secret Service.” The tear sparked and vanished. “The Mirror is grateful for your assistance, Undersheriff. Thank you for securing the crime scene for me.”

 

“I just want to know one thing.” Sheriff Kaminski kept his voice low. “Is the Hand involved in this?”

Kaldar considered before making his answer. He needed their cooperation. It would make things easier, and he needed to build contacts in law enforcement. “Yes.”

The sheriff chewed on it for a long breath.

“How do you know?” Rodwell asked.

Kaldar cycled through his options. Neither one of the men struck him as a social climber. They were good at what they did and were happy right where they were. If he came on with an imperious aristocratic air, they’d stonewall him. The buddy-buddy approach wouldn’t work, either—their town was on the line, and they were both too grim for jokes. A straight shooter, just-doing-my-job type was his best bet.

Kaldar delayed another half a second, as if weighing the gravity of the information, and pointed at a fragment of a tentacle a few feet away.

The two men looked in the direction of his fingers.

“That’s a piece of a Hand operative,
pieuvre
class. Six to ten tentacles, amphibious, weighs in close to five hundred pounds. A nasty breed.” He clipped his words a bit, adding a touch of a military tone to his voice.

“You’ve seen one before?” Rodwell asked. The hint of challenge in his voice was a shade lighter.

Kaldar pretended to think for a moment and grasped the sleeve of his leather jacket. The clasps on his wrist snapped open, and he pulled the sleeve down, revealing his forearm. Four quarter-sized round scars dotted his forearm in a ragged bracelet, the reminder of a tentacle wrapping around his wrist. The suckers had burned into his skin, and not even the best magic the Mirror had at its disposal had been able to remove the scars. He let them see it and pulled the sleeve closed. “Yes. I’ve seen one.”

“Did it hurt?” Rodwell asked.

“I don’t remember,” Kaldar answered honestly. “I was busy at the time.” He heard people say that you couldn’t kill a
pieuvre
operative with a knife. You could. You just had to have the proper motivation.

The sheriff stared at the wreckage. “What do they want here?”

Kaldar gave him a flat look and clamped his mouth shut. Giving up the information too easily wouldn’t do. Kaminski didn’t like him and didn’t trust him. However, if Kaldar risked his neck and broke the rules to put his fears to rest, well, it would be a different story. But no straight shooter would break the rules without serious doubts.

A wise man far away in a different world once said, “Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world.” Kaminski was worried about his town. It was written all over his face. That worry was the lever. Apply the proper amount of force, and Kaldar could shift the sheriff to his side.

The silence won.

“Look, Master Mar, I know you’re breaking regulations,” Kaminski said. “I just need to know if my people are safe.”

Kaldar rocked back on his heels, looked at the sky, and sighed. “I don’t normally do this.”

Kaminski and Rodwell took a step closer, almost in unison. “It won’t go anywhere,” the sheriff promised. “You have my word.”

Kaldar took another breath. “Eight hours ago, the West Egyptian authorities discovered that a group of thieves broke into the Pyramid of Ptah. The perpetrators stole a magic device of great strategic value. It was a theft for hire, and the Dukedom of Louisiana’s Hand was the intended recipient of the device. In the early-morning hours, the thieves crossed the border and arrived here, to meet the Hand’s operatives. The Hand is infamous for double-crossing the hired help, so the thieves picked a public, well-known location for their own safety. As you can see, their fears were justified.”

“So Adriana was never the intended target?” Kaminski asked.

“No, Sheriff. It was simply the closest public place. Your people are safe.”

“Thank you,” Kaminski said simply.

“If the city was never the target, why is the Mirror involved?” Rodwell frowned.

“Because the attempted exchange took place on our soil, West Egypt requires our assistance in recovering the device. It’s a diplomatic nightmare already. We must resolve this and quickly, or they may take matters into their own hands. Nobody wants to have half a dozen of the Claws of Bast running around in the realm.”