Promise of Blood (10 page)

Adamat rolled his eyes. Uskan meant well, but he spoke as if the explosion had been Adamat’s fault.

Uskan counted rows of shelves before turning down one with purpose. He grabbed a sliding ladder and pushed it along in front of him. His voice echoed in the empty space above them. “It used to be Jileman University got all the good library grants. In fact, the Public Archives in Adopest is twice the size of our collection. Why didn’t you go there first?”

Adamat paused to run his fingers along a leather book spine. He liked libraries. They were dry and dusty, with the smell of papers, the smell he associated most with knowledge. To an inspector, knowledge was paramount. “Because the city center is a zoo right now. Execution, remember?”

Uskan turned to blink at him. “Oh, right.” He resumed pushing the ladder. “If we don’t have luck here, go to the Archives. They’re quite well organized. Some very talented librarians down there. Cross-reference ‘theology’ and ‘history.’ At least, that’s where I’m going to look first.” Uskan halted the rolling ladder and climbed up it. The heavy iron rattled as he climbed, and Adamat put a hand out to steady it.

“I try not to reference theology at all.”

Uskan’s dry chuckle drifted down from ten feet up. “Who does these days?” A pause. “Now, that’s strange.”

“What?”

The ladder rattled as Uskan came back down. “The books are missing. Someone must have checked them out. Only faculty are allowed to take books out of the library, and our school of theology is in shambles right now. It consists of three brothers who spend half the year on sabbatical in warmer climate. Hardly anyone studies theology anymore. It’s all about mathematics and science. Kresimir, our physics and chemistry departments have quadrupled in size since I started here.” He glanced back up the ladder to the empty spots on the bookshelf. “I distinctly remember… no matter, let’s look somewhere else.”

Adamat followed his friend up to the third floor. The books he thought to find there were also missing. They looked in two more places before Uskan leaned against a bookshelf and wiped his brow. “Someone must be doing a theology dissertation,” he said. “Damned theology students always take the books. We don’t get many these days, but when we do, they think they own the place because their grandfathers gave this grant or that back in the day.”

Adamat wondered how much to tell him about his investigation. The words had little danger on their own, but Adamat wanted as few people as possible to know the nature of his investigation. No sense risking being branded a traitor before Tamas was in full power.

“Do you have any books from the Bleakening? I’ve heard there is an abundance of writing on Kresimir from that time.”

“Where did you hear that?”

“A newspaper I read in early spring, three years ago.”

“Bah, the newspapers will print any rubbish. It was a very religious time, certainly, but the Bleakening was a dark ages bereft of knowledge. Kresimir and his siblings had disappeared. The new monarchies were locked in a struggle with the Predeii—an ancient caste of powerful Privileged. Not much of anything survives from that period. The vice-chancellor once told me that if we had half the knowledge about sorcery and science that we did during Kresimir’s Time—most of which was lost during the Bleakening—we’d be living in a golden age for noble and peasant alike.”

“Well, try referencing theology, history, and sorcery.”

“I’ll make a librarian of you yet,” Uskan said.

“What do you know about sorcery?” Adamat asked.

“Sorcerous philosophy is a bit of a hobby of mine, though I have no talent for sorcery myself. My grandfather was a Privileged. A healer, actually.” Uskan paused here and gave Adamat an expectant look.

“Yes?” Adamat prompted.

Uskan scowled. “A healer. They’re the rarest of Privileged. Even schoolboys with an introductory class on sorcery know that. It’s said the human body is so complex that only one of every hundred Privileged has more than the most rudimentary healing capabilities.”

“Rare, then?”

“Very rare, Adamat. Lord, with your penchant for details one would think you’d know about this sort of thing. Don’t you know anything about sorcery?”

“Not really,” Adamat admitted. He lived in a world of city streets, citizens, and criminals. He didn’t have time for sorcery and frankly, it was a foreign thing. He came across the odd Knack here and there, but stronger stuff was the realm of the cabals, and an inspector had no business with any of that. What he knew came from a few hours of schooling when he was a boy.

“You’re a Knacked,” Uskan said, “so you have the third eye, correct?”

“Yes, but I’m not sure what that has to do with anything…”

“So you can see the auras of all things when you open your sight and look into what Privileged call the Else?”

Nowadays Adamat rarely opened his third eye. It was an uncomfortable feeling at best, but he remembered the glow that surrounded everything in that sight, as if the world had been painted in vibrant pastels. “Yes.”

“A Privileged manipulates the Else,” Uskan said. “Each of a Privileged’s fingers is attached to one of the elements: Fire, Earth, Water, Air, and Aether.”

“But fire isn’t an element,” Adamat said. “It’s the result of combustion.”

Uskan sniffed. “Bear with me. This explanation is recognized as imperfect in the light of discoveries of the last hundred years, but it’s the best we have. Now, each finger corresponds to an element and to a Privileged’s strength with that element, the thumb being the strongest digit. A Privileged uses his strong hand—most often his right—to call upon the auras of that which he wants to manipulate in the Else. He uses his off hand to direct those auras once they have been pulled into our world.”

“So how does a powder mage’s magic work?”

“Bugger if I know. Privileged hate powder mages, and the cabals have always discouraged a study of them.”

“Why such a strong hate?” Adamat had heard most Privileged were allergic to gunpowder.

“Fear,” Uskan said. “Most Privileged’s spells have a range of less than a half mile. Powder mages can shoot from over twice that. The cabals have never liked being at a disadvantage. I’ve also been told that whereas all things, living or dead or elemental, have auras in the Else, gunpowder does not, and that makes Privileged nervous. Ah, here we are.”

Uskan paused in front of a bookcase. He ran his finger along several spines before taking them out and piling them into Adamat’s arms. Dust rose as the books thumped against each other. “Only one missing,” Uskan said. “I know just where it is, too. The vice-chancellor’s office.”

“Can we get it?”

“The vice-chancellor is away, summoned to Adopest early this morning with some urgency. I don’t have a key to his office. We’ll have to wait until he gets back.”

They retired to one of the tables with their stacks of books and set to their research. Adamat sat down and flipped open the first book. He frowned. “Uskan?”

“Hmm?” Uskan looked over. He leapt to his feet and rounded the table, moving faster than Adamat had ever seen him. “What is this? Who the pit did this?”

The first several pages of the book had been removed, and dozens after that had whole sections of the text blacked out, as if someone had dipped their finger in ink and smudged it along the page. Uskan mopped at his forehead with a handkerchief and began pacing behind Adamat.

“These books are invaluable,” he said. “Who would do such a thing?”

Adamat leaned forward and squinted at the ripped line of the paper. He judged the book in his hands. It was made with vellum, thicker than today’s paper and four times as tough. The ripped edge was slightly blackened.

“A Privileged,” Adamat said.

“How can you tell?”

Adamat pointed to the ripped edge. “Do you know of anything besides sorcery that could make a burn like that without damaging the rest of the book?”

Uskan resumed pacing. “A Privileged! Kresimir damn them. They should know the value of books!”

“I think they do,” Adamat said. “Else they would have burned the whole thing. Let’s take a look at the rest here.” He reached for the next book, and then the next. Of the eleven they’d removed from the shelf, seven had passages smudged or had pages ripped out. By the time they finished the stack, Uskan was fuming.

“Wait till the vice-chancellor finds out! He’ll head straight down to Skyline and beat those Privileged senseless, he’ll—”

“Tamas has executed the entire cabal.”

Uskan froze. His nostrils flared in and out, his lips bunched in a fierce frown. “I suppose there will be no redress for this, then.”

Adamat shook his head. “Let’s take a look at what we have.”

They spent some time with the books and they found eight different places where smudged writing could have been references to Kresimir’s Promise. Yet the passages were indecipherable.

“That last book,” Adamat said. “The one in the vice-chancellor’s office…?”

“Yes,” Uskan said absently, scratching his head. “ ‘
In Service of the King
.’ It outlines the duties of the royal cabals in their protection of the kings of the Nine. A very famous work.”

Adamat smoothed the front of his coat. “Let’s see if he left his door unlocked.”

Uskan returned the books and chased Adamat out into the courtyard of the library. “He won’t have left it unlocked,” he said. “Let’s just wait until he gets back. The vice-chancellor is a private sort of man.”

“I’m on an investigation,” Adamat said as he entered the main administration building.

“That doesn’t mean you have the right to look through other people’s studies,” Uskan said. “Besides, the door will be locked.” He smiled triumphantly at Adamat when the doorknob rattled but did not turn in Adamat’s hand.

“No matter,” Adamat said. He crouched down and removed the tiny set of lockpicks he kept in one boot. Uskan’s eyes grew wide.

“What? No, you can’t do that!”

“When did you say the vice-chancellor will be back?”

“Not until late,” Uskan said. “I…” He realized his mistake at once as Adamat began fiddling with the lock. Uskan huffed and slumped against the wall. “I should have told you, ‘Any minute,’” he muttered.

“You’re a terrible liar,” Adamat said.

“Yes, I am. And I won’t be able to lie to the vice-chancellor when he asks if someone’s been in his office.”

“Come, now. He won’t know.”

“Of course he will, how can…”

The lock clicked and Adamat pushed the door open gently. The office inside was more representative of what one might expect from a university type. Books and papers were everywhere. There were plates of half-eaten food on chairs, tables, even the floor. The entire room was walled by bookshelves twice as tall as a man, and those were overflowing, sagging with the weight of too many books stacked haphazardly upon each other.

“Don’t move anything,” Uskan said. “He knows exactly where he left every item. He’ll know if…” Uskan fell silent at a look from Adamat. “Here, let me find the book,” he said sullenly.

Adamat stayed at the edge of the paper-and-ink jungle that was the vice-chancellor’s office while Uskan looked for the missing book with the natural grace of a secretary. Papers were lifted, plates and books shifted, but everything was returned to its exact place.

Adamat stood on his toes and surveyed the room. “Is this it?” Adamat asked, pointing to the center of the vice-chancellor’s desk.

Uskan pulled his head out from beneath the vice-chancellor’s chair. “Oh. Yes.”

Adamat stepped gingerly through the room. He lifted the book carefully and began to leaf through it. Uskan came up beside him.

“No damaged pages,” Adamat reported. He scanned the pages, flipping through, looking for just two words to stand out. He found his prize in the book’s afterword, on the last page.

Adamat read aloud: “And they will guard Kresimir’s Promise with their lives, for if it is broken, all the Nine might perish.” He scanned the page, and then the page after, and then the page before. There were no other references. He scowled at the pages. “This doesn’t make sense.”

Uskan’s finger stabbed the middle of the book, right at the spine.

“What?”

“More pages missing,” Uskan said. “Half the afterword.” His voice trembled with rage.

Adamat looked closer. Sure enough, the pages had been torn clean from the book. The binding was different on this volume, making it difficult to tell that the pages were missing at all. He sighed. “Where can I find another copy of this book?”

Uskan shook his head. “Maybe the Public Archives. I think Nopeth University has a copy, too.”

“I’m not sitting in a coach for the better part of a month just to ‘maybe’ find a book at Nopeth University,” Adamat said. He snapped the book shut and returned it to the vice-chancellor’s desk. “I’ll have to check the Public Archives.”

“The riots,” Uskan protested as Adamat made his way to the door.

Adamat paused.

“They’ll have it locked up,” Uskan said. “The Archives contain tax records, family histories, even safe-deposit boxes. They have guards, Adamat.”

That was only a problem if they caught him. “Thanks for your help,” Adamat said. “Let me know if you find anything else.”

Chapter 7