Pathfinder Tales: Lord of Runes (8 page)

I removed the napkin and pinched the flesh beside my wound to produce more blood. Smearing it across the page, I revealed more and more text.

I squeezed my hand again. Vencarlo touched my arm. “You’ll bleed yourself dry before you cover another page.”

“You are right, of course.” My mind reeled with possibilities. Thassilonian history enthralled me, as it did most members of the Pathfinder Society, but I had never devoted the time to mastering the subject.

“It’s late,” said Vencarlo. “Tomorrow, you can buy a few chickens from the market.”

“Perhaps I can find a night market. I want to know what mysteries this book contains.”

“It’s late,” he said. “Let it wait until tomorrow.”

“But what will I do until then?”

He filled our goblets. “A toast!”

“To what?”

“Give me a moment,” he said. “I’ll think of something.”

4

The Laboratory

Radovan

Sunlight stabbed me in the eyes. I rolled away from it and fell out of bed onto a carpet of dirty clothes. Last night I’d been too distracted to notice, but Janneke’s place was a pigsty.

The bounty hunter stretched out over the sliver of bed she hadn’t already claimed. I liked the way the morning light picked out the tiny hairs on her skin. Light brown freckles dotted her back and arms. Her braids had come undone, spilling red gold across her muscled shoulders. She was stronger than she looked. I had the bruises to prove it.

Searching for my clothes, I found Janneke’s double crossbow under a rumpled quilt. I picked it up to feel the heft. It was heavier than I’d guessed, with an iron cap on the butt and steel reinforcements on the sides. Instead of a string, the mechanism on top had a metal cup on four springs. The bottom looked like a regular crossbow except with a fat cylinder feeding quarrels into the groove: gnome craftsmanship, real smooth. If I found out where she had it made, I’d ask the boss to buy me one.

I put down the bow and stepped in a spill of cold noodles. I’d known some slobs in my days, but Janneke was in the running for the worst one.

I picked up a few more things off the floor until I found my pants and one of my kickers. I pulled them on and stood on the boot foot to avoid another nasty surprise.

More clothes spilled out of a doorless wardrobe. A pitcher and basin sat on a little table by the window. Against the inner wall stood a bigger table with a couple chairs. Janneke’s mismatched armor settled on one. Her backpack sat on the other. Its openings were all on the top. Along with her two billy clubs, the ends of a dozen different crossbow cylinders stuck out. The butts were painted in different colors with different patterns molded onto the caps. I guessed that let her choose the right ammo by touch.

The table was the only tidy spot in the flat. A neat row of open cylinders lay beside the surprises Janneke packed inside them. I recognized the nets, coiled line, wooden balls, and brick spikes. She also had a box of caltrops, jars of powder, and different colors of glass vials. The jars and vials smelled pretty bad, and I knew I wouldn’t want to get hit with one of those cylinders. Whatever was in them, Janneke looked ready for anything.

I opened the windows for some fresh air. At the squeak, Janneke moaned and covered her head with a pillow. Seconds later, she went back to snoring.

Wanted posters covered the walls. Except for a few gnomes, hellspawn, or half-orcs, the faces were human. I pegged the artist as a Chelaxian because all the Varisians looked sly and all the Shoanti savage. The hellspawn looked ugly as sin. Most do. Desna smiled on me that way.

Most of the posters read KORVOSA, but others read MAGNIMAR, RIDDLEPORT, KAER MAGA, or JANDERHOFF. I memorized the faces on the last one. For all their talk of daughters’ honor, I wouldn’t put it past the dwarf lords to hire an assassin.

That thought made me want my knife. My other kicker turned up first, but then I found my jacket pushed up under the bed. Careful not to wake Janneke, I made sure the blade was still in the built-in sheath.

“Whazzatonnerbah?”

Janneke arched her back as she stretched, proving she was a couple inches longer than her bed. She swallowed and cleared her throat. “I said, what’s that on your back? A tattoo?”

“What? No, I don’t got any.”

“Oh. I just figured you Sczarni boys usually go for tattoos.”

“You think I’m Sczarni?”

“Well, you sound like a Chel, but you look Varisian. Aren’t you?”

“By blood, yeah.” I looked over my shoulder but couldn’t see whatever she saw. Maybe she bruised me worse than I figured.

“Turn around.” She sat up and turned me herself. Whatever she saw made her let out a big, beer-hall guffaw.

“What? What?” I tried to see but found myself turning around like Arni chasing his own tail. “You got a mirror under all this garbage?”

“No,” she said, still laughing. “But look.”

She pointed at a wanted poster beside the bed. Last night she’d caught me up in some northern wrestling move and pinned me there for a nice little while.

The ink was smudged from where it’d come off on my skin, but I could still make out the words:

8,000 ALIVE, 2,000 DEAD

ZORAN

Human Male Varisian

Wanted for Great Theft

May Possess DEADLY Arcane Artifacts

Known associates: Sczarni, Chimneysweeps, Cerulean Society

Report to Citadel Volshyenek

KORVOSA

The image was smeared, but the freckled nose and pointed chin looked familiar. “This guy related to the thief who robbed me?”

“What?” Janneke blinked and scowled at the bright eastern window. “No, it was him I was chasing. Zoran.”

“That was a woman.”

“Zoran is a master of disguise.” A few strands of hair fell across her face. She gathered them up and started weaving them back into braids. “The city guard thinks he disguises himself as a servant to get inside the houses he burgles.”

“I know the difference between a man and a woman.”

She shrugged. “If you see him again, tip me off. I’ll cut you in.”

“I don’t know how long we’ll be in town. Depends on how long it takes the boss to settle his business.” Digging around for my belt, I came up with her helmet. The black paint made for a pretty good cougar face, but I could see it used to be gray steel. “That guard captain didn’t like your hat. How come?”

“You’ve never heard of the Gray Maidens?”

I shrugged.

“We were a special unit answerable only to the queen. When that went bad, we split up. My commander formed a new outfit. We went north and hired ourselves out as guards, bounty hunters, whatever we could find. When
that
went bad, I came back here to freelance. What kind of work do you do?”

“I’m a…” I had to think about it. Over the years, my arrangement with the boss had changed. He’d called me his friend, but that goes only so far when one of you’s a lord of Cheliax and the other’s whatever the hell I am. Whenever the question came up, we always ended up where we started. “Bodyguard.”

Janneke nodded. “And your boss? What’s he?”

“He’s what you call incognito.”

“You mean he’s traveling incognito.”

“No, we’re traveling in a carriage. He’s incognito.”

It took her a second to decide whether I was just that adorable. She hit me with the pillow. “I don’t understand even stupid jokes before my first cup of coffee. Let’s get some. There’s a gnome with this wild steam machine down by the Traveling Man.”

“That sounds great, but I’d better…” I jerked my thumb over my shoulder. “Business and pleasure, you know. On the job. Professionalism.” Once I heard myself, I realized I was babbling.

“Yeah, sure.” She didn’t like it, but she heard what I was really saying. “I could use some more shuteye.”

“If I see your gal, I’ll let you know.”

“Guy. But sounds good.”

There was a little more of that before I got out the door. Not my cleanest getaway, but I’d had worse. Sometimes much worse.

I cut north to Jeggare Street, hoping to snag one of those street signs, but the place was already lousy with people. If I was going to steal one, it’d have to be late at night or not at all. I headed back toward the bridge and got a surprise.

The boss strolled down Fort Korvosa Boulevard with Arni at his side. By his delicate posture, I knew he’d had a night of many cups.

Sleepy-eyed, he didn’t notice me, but Arni did. The dog gave me the upward nod but didn’t give me away as I slipped up behind the boss. He wouldn’t let anybody else do that, but we were pals.

In a frail voice, I said, “Spare a few coins for a war vet, milord?”

The boss turned real slow, raising an eyebrow as if I was the one caught stinking of wine in Old Korvosa.

“Radovan.” He spoke all careful. “I have discovered the most extraordinary thing.”

“Me, too.” I pointed at a JEGGARE STREET sign.

He blinked. He turned to look at the sign. He turned back and blinked again. “Very amusing. What are you doing here?”

“I’m being discreet. What are you doing? It looks like you drained all the taps at Jeggy’s Jug.”

His eyes got big, his face turning red. “Never refer to that establishment by that odious name.” He winced at the volume of his own voice. “As for my nocturnal activity, I was visiting an old friend. We spent the night reminiscing.”

He had a bandage on his hand. “You got hurt?”

“That is precisely what I was trying to tell you. Quite by accident, I have discovered the secret of the mysterious book.”

Not another mysterious book, I thought. But I knew better than to say it. If the boss had a specialty—in a way he had hundreds, but if he had only one—it’d be books. Mysterious books, cursed books, books in foreign languages, books on scrolls and tablets and wood carvings, evil books, forbidden books, even sometimes naughty books with pictures, which I liked to peruse while I was waiting for him to come back to his library. Anyway, the boss liked books, all kinds. “Maybe you better catch me up.”

The boss started talking, only he went in loops instead of his usual straight line. He started with something about a girl, then he told me about his old classmate’s library. He mentioned something about the girl’s sculpted hair, and he said his school chum had left him a blank book. He said he wanted to find out more about the girl, so that’s why he visited his old fencing master.

I narrowed in on the important point. “So you like this girl.”

“You will refer to her as Lady Illyria.”

“She’s a looker?”

“That is quite irrelevant.”

“So she’s a hag?”

“How dare you?”

“So she’s a looker?”

“I would eschew your crude lingo for a more fitting term like ‘beauteous’ or ‘exquisite,’ or perhaps— That is quite beside the point. What matters is that I do not trust her. I am not even sure I like her very much. She is impertinent.”

“I’m impertinent.”

“My point exactly.”

If we kept on that way, I was going to irritate him. It was better he woke up all the way before I tested his patience. “How about we eat a bun and drink some coffee?”

He covered his mouth to hold in a burp, or worse. “A splendid suggestion.”

The boss looked impressed at the gnome’s crazy steam gizmo. It seemed like a lot of trouble to make such a little cup of coffee, but it was damned fine coffee, and hot. I bought sweet rolls from a street vendor, palming one to feed Arni under the table while the boss admired the coffee machine. He sent me back for more while he ordered more coffee.

Four cups and six buns later, we strolled back across the bridge to the mainland. The boss looked better, but I still didn’t crack wise when we crossed Jeggare Circle. If I wasn’t careful, one day he was going to poke me with that sword. Instead, I got him to tell me his story again. This time it made more sense.

“While I finish my inventory of his books, I want you to examine Ygresta’s rooms.”

“Got it.”

The boss saw things I couldn’t, especially when he used a spell or held his Shadowless Sword. But sometimes I could spot things he’d missed. He said that was on account of “triangulation,” him looking down from his tower and me looking up from the gutter. I say it’s because I grew up on robbery and hiding from the city guard.

“Will Lady Illyria be there?” I said all innocent-like.

The boss squinted at the horizon and then at the sun. He had a knack for estimating the time by the height of the sun and knowing what day it was, which I never really understood. “She will meet us by the gates in approximately twelve minutes. We need her to escort us into the campus, but we can leave on our own. There is no reason for her to stay while we conduct our investigation.”

“You sure you can’t think of a reason?”

He let his hand rest on the pommel of his sword, but he didn’t say nothing. He didn’t have to.

When we made it back to the Acadamae gates, I spotted this Illyria. It couldn’t be anybody else with her hair frosted purple to match her clothes—and her eyes, too, I noticed. They were like the boss’s, a deep violet, only a little brighter than his.

Illyria sat on the edge of the sundial where I’d waited yesterday. She was reading a little book, holding the pages open with her thumb. She wore snug woolen trousers and a leather jerkin and boots, both dyed deep purple. They matched the frames of her spectacles and the cute little hat pinned in her hair.

She stood up as we got near, fumbling to hide her specs and the book at the same time.

The boss made his special occasions bow. “Lady Illyria, may I present my man Radovan.”

“Charmed.” I tried saying it all smooth, like a gentleman. With me, it always comes out a different kind of smooth.

Illyria slipped her book into a little pouch, turning the cover so the boss couldn’t see the title, but I got a peek:
The Red Rose and the Black
. She gave me the up and down. “How rugged.”

The boss has his knacks. I got mine. Not that I was horning in on his action. That’d be a hell of a way to end the partnership.

Inside the Acadamae walls, we walked past students sitting on the lawn. Like street gangs, different groups tended to wear the same colors or kinds of clothes. The necromancers were easy to make, all in dark robes, most of them pale as mushrooms. The diabolists wore lots of red and black to match their imps, the colors of the Thrice-Damned House of Thrune and Abrogail II, our fearsome queen. The others I couldn’t figure what magic they did, only that they liked the same hats or familiars.