Stolen Compass (The Painter Mage Book 4) (13 page)

I whistled softly. There were plenty of reasons for the Trelking to want to remove something like that. If it worked as Tom described, the compass would possibly restrict the Trelking’s visions of Conlin, remove his prescience. If that were true, I could see why my father had chosen Conlin. The compass would keep him out of sight from other magical beings.

And I wondered if the city changing had weakened the compass. Trees that once formed patterns around the city were gone, no longer providing the same protection. I didn’t know that the pattern Taylor had found was the reason for the protection, but it had to be a
part
of it. How much else had changed since my father was last here?

“Would it work against the Trelking?” I asked.

“I don’t know. The Elder seemed to think there wasn’t anything that could see through the compass. I disagreed with him and for years thought that I was right.”

“Why?” I twisted in my chair to be able to see both Tom and Devan.

“Well, because of what happened to you. The Trelking knew enough about you to know where you’d appear. He knew enough to place a reason for you to remain on that side of the Threshold.” Tom fixed his gaze on Devan. “Did he not send De’avan for you, Oliver? Did he not foresee your friendship and how that would bind you to him?”

“I’ve lived with and around the Trelking long enough that I don’t think he sees everything. Even he will admit that there are limitations to his sight. Could he have foreseen that I would help steal Devan away to keep her from marrying the Druist? Could he have foreseen that I would return to Conlin?”

Tom cupped his hands together over his lap. “Yes.”

I opened my mouth to say something, but bit it back. Was it possible that the Trelking knew what would happen between Devan and me, that I’d risk myself and my safety to get her free of him, to keep her from the Druist Mage?

As much as I hated it, the answer was yes. If he knew what I would do, the risk to Devan was lessened. The Trelking could commit her to the Druist Mage, could use her as leverage to keep his realm safe, all while knowing—or at least suspecting—that I would do what was needed to protect her.

Would he do that? Would he risk her like that based on his prescience?

If that were the case, then the Trelking would
want
to have the compass removed. He’d want to be able to see what we might do. If he thought we really planned to attack the Druist Mage at some point, the Trelking would want to know when.

“What was in the box in the storage shed?” I asked Tom. “It’s not the shardstone box.” I watched him as I said that last. If Tom knew about the shardstone box the Trelking sought, I wanted to know. His face didn’t betray anything. Apparently, that didn’t necessarily mean anything, not when it came to Tom. Like my father, there was much more about him than I knew. He was the Waykeeper, and maybe nearly as skilled a painter as I was.

Tom sighed. “It’s… unfortunate that was taken. Unlike the compass, the storage unit was owned by your father. He left certain items there for me to use.”

“For you?”

Tom nodded. “They were intended to help further my training. It’s been a long time since I attempted any additional training.”

“Why the storage unit? Why not leave them here? Or in the house or in…” I glanced back at Jakes. He shook his head slightly, barely more than an imperceptible motion. Tom didn’t know about the space beneath the shed? Why would that be? “Other places I’ve found,” I went on.

“I could not access the house. Your father made certain that I was skilled enough to serve as the Waykeeper, but I have never had your talent with arcane patterns, Oliver. I think you might be surprised to know that what I’ve seen from you rivals what your father could accomplish.”

I’d have to think on that later. If what Tom said was true—and I no longer knew what
was
true and what was not—then my father might never have wanted me to reach the Trelking, but the Trelking had been the reason that I managed to learn what I did about the arcane patterns.

“My role has only been one of guidance,” Tom went on.

“What does that mean, exactly?”

“I serve those who come through the Rooster, ushering them on to the next destination. Some, I guide toward the Threshold and the guardians help them cross. Others I’ve helped escape places where they were in danger.” He tipped his head to me. “I have placed more than a few in Arcanus.”

“Do the masters know about you?”

Tom smiled. “They know of me. They consider me a skilled tagger, as they should. Your father saw to it that I was something else.”

“What of the box?”

Tom’s face clouded. “That’s what troubles me. There should have been nothing in there of any value. Mostly inks and some paints, but little else. Anything of use I took out of there long ago.” His eyes darted toward the room at the back.

“How long ago?” I asked, following the direction of his gaze.

“Shortly after I last saw your father.” He smiled sheepishly. “He said I should wait, but there has always been a part of me that wanted to be a little bit more. Unfortunately, it was clear I wasn’t ready for what he left me. Maybe in time.”

“Where is it now? What he left you, I mean.”

“The inks were returned to the box. They were the Elder’s paint. There was value in that.”

Maybe more than Tom realized. “And the other items?”

He swept his hand around him. “I’ve kept them here. This place is as good as many others to keep items safe. The Elder saw to that.”

“Where? Can you show me?”

I started to stand. As I did, the hairs on my arms started to stand on end.

I glanced over to Devan. She had already lurched into motion, jumping to her feet and starting toward the door.

“Jakes?” I said. The huge shifter looked over, his expression unreadable. “It’s about to get nasty.”

“We’re safe here,” Tom said. “This is a place of peace. The Elder saw to—”

“He saw to the diner,” I told Tom. That was what I had sensed coming in here. “Not your living quarters. The only protections here are what you placed on it. And while I don’t deny you have skill, what’s coming is a little bit more powerful than that.”

T
he air became charged
with a mixture of energy. There was what I readied; the simple act of me preparing to use patterns left a magical sense hanging around me. Then there was what Devan did. She took one of her figurines—only a single one, which I’ll admit surprised me a bit—and set it by the door. She whispered to it and stepped away. Jakes didn’t seem to do anything, but he still
seemed
ready, if that made any sort of sense. There was a part of me that wanted him to shift, to change into his wolf form to be ready to frighten whatever would come at us, but he didn’t.

“Where did you put them?” I asked Tom.

Tom knelt in front of a small wooden cabinet and paused as he drew the door open to glance back at me. “Put what?”

“You’ve said it yourself. The storage unit held things of my father’s. That’s what they’re after. So where did you put them?” Was it Brand? Or was this another attacker?

He shook his head, his gaze never straying from the door. “This is a place of safety,” he said again.

I turned to Jakes. “Can you tell?”

He tipped his head, and his nose elongated, briefly stretching into something more wolf-like, before snapping back to his human nose. He nodded toward the room behind the closed door. “There is power stored through there, Morris.”

Tom jumped to his feet and darted in front of me, moving more quickly than I would have expected him to manage at his age. He held a small metal tin in each hand. Paint, I suspect. From what he said, it might have been paint that my father had mixed.

“There’s nothing back there,” Tom said, trying to veer in front of me.

I reached the door at the same time as he did. With a practiced snap of his wrist, he smeared an irregular circle onto the door with a light brown ink.

Before he had the chance to charge it, I pressed
my
power through the pattern. It was risky doing that, especially without knowing what Tom intended, but I didn’t want to give him the chance to seal the door himself. Besides, before I used the pattern, I’d flicked a pinch of ink toward it, enough to disrupt whatever it was that Tom was attempting.

The door bulged with a soft explosion. Tom shot me an angry look.

“Oliver, you should be more careful.”

I grabbed his arm as he readied to make another mark on the door. “Jakes—”

Tom glanced over his shoulder. “You don’t have to do that with me,” Tom said.

“It’s not you,” I said. “Listen to what’s on the other side.”

Tom closed his eyes. His right foot made a swirling pattern on the ground, a trick that few painters from Arcanus ever learned. They were always so focused on paints and inks that they never paused to think of what else could focus power. Tom had learned from my father some of the same lessons that I had learned, but I’d had to cross the Threshold to learn them.

“What is it?” he asked.

I shook my head. “Don’t know.” Not Te’alan, I didn’t think. The signature was something like a painter, but not any painter I’d ever detected. And I didn’t remember seeing any windows, so whatever got in had come in through walls wrapped in protection. It wasn’t like my father had completely abandoned this side of the Rooster. There were protections in place here, but they were weaker than what was found toward the front side of the diner and along the inner wall.

“What are you going to do?” Tom asked.

I felt Devan come up next to me. She reached into her bag and grabbed another of her figurines. This one had massive claws that crossed over its body and a strange, twisted nose pointing to the air. “Let me,” she said.

She set the figurine on the ground and whispered something softly to it. As she did, the little carving started to shake and twist and elongate, growing to fill the space between us and the door.

Tom took a step back and away from the figurine. “What is that?”

I tipped my head. “That’s my girl.” I slapped her lightly on her butt, and she turned to give me a grin. “How long will it give us?”

I didn’t know a whole lot about her figurines. Hell, I’d only learned that they were more than a distraction for her when Nik attacked. I’d seen what the troll guys could do, the way they had slowed him enough to buy us time. And with painting, sometimes that was all that it was about: getting time to make the painting changes needed to work the right patterns.

“Depends,” Devan said.

“On what?”

She nodded toward the door. “On what my brother brought with him.”

I palmed another charm, now holding two. One would create a circle of protection—always a good thing to have on hand when facing unknown magic—and the other would go boom. Also good to have on hand.

I stepped past Devan’s claw friend, eyeing Tom with a mischievous look as I did, and kicked at the door. It crashed open. The claw man skittered into the room. There really was no other way to describe the way that he moved.

Ducking low, I moved into the room after him holding my charms out from me, readied for whatever it was that we might come across.

There was nothing.

Not exactly nothing. A darkness moved, almost like a shadow, but then faded. Wind blew in through a hole in the wall, but otherwise, the room was empty. Claw man skittered over to the wall and stood there, arms outstretched as if to grab at it, and twisted his funny-looking head around, almost like he was sniffing.

I stood and peered around Tom’s private room. A desk took up most of the floor space. The chair had been tipped over and kicked against the wall. A few paintings hung on the wall, though they looked like actual art rather than some tagger trying his hand at making shapes. I studied one for a moment and realized that it had been painted by my father. There was his steady stroke and distinctive signature across the bottom. Interestingly, the painting was of Settler Hill and showed the compass in the foreground of the hill overlooking the city.

“Those were paintings he left me,” Tom started.

“What’s missing?” I asked Tom, pulling my eyes away from the painting. I’d need to study it more to understand why my father had painted it. There was always a why with the Elder. Could it be simple chance that Tom would have a painting of one of the things stolen from the city?

Tom searched across his desk. The computer stood untouched, the screen flickering slightly, but otherwise unharmed. The keyboard resting on the desk had been tipped upside down. A stack of paper was scattered around the desk, some torn as if hastily searched through. A large pad of paper angled against the desk, and I grabbed it, flipping through the pages. Tom must have used the pad to diagram patterns. There were series of potentially protective patterns made on the page. Would he have attempted to use these to keep the Rooster safe or did he have another purpose?

“What were you planning here, Tom?” I asked.

Tom glanced from me to Jakes who stood in the doorway behind us. “Nothing, Oliver. There is nothing here. I can’t get what I wanted to work.” He twisted toward the claw man and shook his head. “I would have planned nothing, but since you’ve returned, I’ve had no choice but to resume my studies. With the attacks growing more frequent to the point that someone was left dead at my restaurant—and one of the Nizashi at that!—I knew I needed to prepare. Who else is going to protect Conlin?”

“Maybe you could’ve tried checking with the shifters,” I said. “Seems to me that Jakes is plenty capable.” I knew what Tom was getting at, but I couldn’t be the one to provide the protection for the city. I wasn’t my father, and I never would be. I didn’t have his artistic talent. I didn’t have his other abilities—what I now knew to be magi abilities. Even if I managed to convince Nik to train me, I might never know enough to keep Conlin protected.

But I
would
keep Devan safe.

“You’ve seen that they have a different purpose here, Oliver. They aren’t meant to protect the city, only prevent crossings.”

“What were they after?” I asked Tom. “You had something of my father’s here, so what was it? It had to be enough to draw them here, knowing that we were here.” It was either a risky attack, or well planned, knowing that Tom would be distracted with us. Either way, I didn’t like it.

“Nothing that mattered,” Tom muttered. “It was something your father left for me to use. You would have no use for it.”

“What was it?” I demanded.

Tom sighed. “A way for me to learn. Pattern recognition. Your father knew I wasn’t skilled enough as a painter, but I have other talents. I can see patterns and can twist them.”

I thought of the stars linked on the outside of the door. They had certainly been twisted. “And?”

“It alters the patterns, changes the intent. Your father set a series of tasks for me, wanting me to evaluate certain patterns to see what they might do. It was his task for me, the way I could still serve the Elder.”

I didn’t need for Tom to explain to me why my father would ask him for such help. As a tagger, any power that he could push through the patterns wouldn’t be nearly as strong as what my father—a true artist—could manage. It would let him test the patterns without risking much. And information about what patterns were useful would be incredibly valuable to any painter.

“So you kept a log,” I said.

Tom nodded. “A log based on your father’s patterns. I couldn’t recreate them, so I had a system in place to document which ones I’d tried and which ones worked.”

Something like that could allow a painter, albeit a powerful one, to alter even my father’s work. “Dangerous,” I whispered. “And the log?”

“Missing.”

“But they weren’t what was held in the box in the storage unit.”

Tom shook his head. “No. That was some leftover items of your father’s. Nothing significant. Mostly clothes, some books, other things that don’t have much use.”

Frustration surged through me. Tom wasn’t telling me everything, and I didn’t know why. I understood that he worked with my father, that he served my father in a way that I might not ever understand, but he needed to share with us what he knew so that we could keep the attacks from repeating. Already, Taylor had been hurt trying to see what they were after. What was next? Me? Devan?

Not if I could have anything to do with it.

I stepped in front of him. I wasn’t really a large guy, nothing like Jakes, but I’d been around enough danger in my days that I wasn’t easily cowed and knew how to exude power even if I didn’t use it. I used everything in my stable of tricks as I forced Tom to look up at me.

“Everything of my father’s has some purpose. You should know that.”

And so should I, I remembered.

I went to the wall and grabbed the paintings hanging there, ignoring Tom’s protests. I stacked the frames on top of each other and carried them over to the gap in the wall, stopping in front of the claw man. “Can you do something about this?” I asked Devan.

She stepped over to him and breathed out a word I couldn’t hear. The claw man shivered and shook and began to shrink back into the small size he’d been before he’d appeared. What tricks did he do that she needed? I suspected that each of the figurines had different uses. The trolls she’d used against Nik had been more about brute strength, taking whatever they needed to slow him down, to prevent him from hurting the rest of us. It had bought me the time I’d needed to stop him.

Once the figurine returned to its tiny size, she picked him up and placed him back into her bag. I stepped outside through the hole in the wall. “You might want to patch this up, Tom.”

I started forward when Jakes’s voice made me pause. “What are you going to do, Morris?”

Without glancing back, I answered. “Can’t risk what they might do with what they’ve taken,” I said. “Or what they
might
take. You make sure no doorways open until we’re ready. Even the ones you don’t know about. I’ll take care of what’s already here.”

Devan caught up to me at the truck and climbed in. I put the pictures between us on the seat, glancing at them to make certain they weren’t damaged, and then started Big Red with a turn of the key.

As I backed out of the parking lot, part of me expected Jakes or even Tom to come running after us, but neither of them did. I didn’t think I would have stopped even if they had.

“Where are we going?” Devan asked.

I shook my head. “Back to the house to start with. We need to understand more about the compass, and then we need to see what we can do to stop your brother.”

“You don’t think they were the same thefts.”

“I had, but now I’m not certain.”

“Why?”

“There’s something that’s been bothering me since we went to the storage unit. We sensed your brother, right?” Devan nodded. “But there was painter power there, too. Unless your brother suddenly became a painter, in which case there wouldn’t be any reason for painter power there. He’s got enough magic he wouldn’t need to use painting. After we found her, I thought it might have been Taylor, but what if it wasn’t?”

“You’re thinking about what went missing from Tom’s place?”

We turned down my street. The evening grew long, and the wind kicked up from out of the west, buffeting the truck. “Whatever else might have been taken, the log would have been the most valuable.” I glanced over as I explained. “If you’ve got someone with the ability to modify patterns, especially patterns laid out by an artist like the Elder, then the log of the effective changes would be valuable, but only to another painter.”

“What if the Druist sent someone else?”

“We’ve seen Adazi, and then Nik. Who else could he send?”

“We don’t know anything about the Druist’s buddies,” she said. “Maybe he’s got a whole fleet of painters.”

I sighed. I could think of all sorts of reasons the compass would be useful to both the Druist
and
the Trelking. “What if both have crossed?” I asked.

“Then their war has already spilled over, Ollie,” she said.

And without my father, who will stop them?