The Guild (8 page)

“Why?” Again, Rexei surprised herself, but she stood by the word, lifting her chin a little. “I don’t know you from
him
.” She poked her thumb at the stairwell sentry. “Why should I go anywhere with
you
?”

“Because I need you to give your report in full to some
very
interested parties, and it needs to be done immediately.” He reached for her hand.

Rexei backed up. “My orders are to report to Master Julianna Harpshadow. Not to
you
. If you want to know the full-on details, you can ask her after I’ve given my report.
If
you’re authorized to know what
she
requested I learn.”

Both the leftenant and his brother stared at her, mouths open but without any sounds coming out. It was Barclei who spoke, poking his thumb at the brother. “Master Harpshadow reports to
him
, you stupid twit.
He’s
the Guild Master.”

She looked back and forth between the three men. The newcomer wasn’t wearing the symbol-stamped gold oval medallion of his guild, so she had no clue which one he headed. Rexei tried a guess. “Hydraulics?”

“The
other
guild,” the leftenant’s brother said flatly. “If you truly overheard what you say you did, then the priests might want to eliminate you. That means
we
need to know everything that you know. Give my contemporaries and I every scrap of knowledge you have, and we will give you sanctuary. Now, come.”

This time, when he held out his hand, Rexei let him clasp hers and pull her into the stairwell he had come from. A last glance over her shoulder showed the leftenant turning to head for the stairwell that led back to the hidden entrance in the motorhorse stables.

“Have you eaten?” the Guild Master asked her.

“Uh . . . somewhat. I’ve got food for a bit,” she added. The leftenant’s brother flicked his hand, dismissing her statement. It occurred to her she didn’t know his name, and it looked like this was another long stairwell spiraling down to who knew where. “So, uh . . . the Leftenant’s name is Rogen Tallnose. If you’re his brother, what’s yours?”

“Alonnen.” He didn’t tack on the family name. “And you’re Rexei. We’re a little bit crowded at the moment; we’ve taken in several of the mages that were released, but that’s all in the outer layers, where you were allowed before. Normally, you’d be quartered with them, but right now you’re in too much danger. Some of the outer layer guildmembers have been shifted to the mid-layers, so that’s overcrowded because of the shift inward . . . and of course some of the mid-levels got bumped into the upper levels.

“So, since you’re now an even bigger target than I would be if they knew about me—or maybe on par,” the Guild Master half joked, “that means you’re going to have to share quarters, since there are no empty rooms left.”

She blinked at that and cleared her throat, hoping he would attribute her flushed face to the heat of this place and her layers of wool. Sharing was not a good idea. Sharing when she was pretending to be male was never a good idea, because they’d room her with another male. She’d have to do all her changing in the refreshing room and bind her breasts even for sleeping. At least it was winter, so the extra layers would keep her warm. “Uh . . . who am I sharing it with?”

“Me.” Pulling his scarf down, he flashed her a smile and opened a door at the bottom of the stairs. Alonnen nodded at yet another person seated at a table. This time, it was a woman, though Rexei could only tell because she had definite curves under her knit tunic. The Guild Master lifted his chin at both of them. “Margei, this is Rexei Longshanks. Rexei’s being moved to the inner Vortex.
Rexei, this is Margei, master rank. She’s sort of a leftenant type—and much better-looking than my brother,” he added, winking at the middle-aged woman.

Margei blushed but gave him a dark look. “And happily married.” She turned her green gaze on Rexei. Her brow creased in a frown. “Well, you’re a bit tall for an unbearded youth. How old are you, lad? Fifteen?”

“Old enough to know it’s none of your business.” At the other woman’s affronted look, Rexei gave her a pointed one. “You’re married, remember?”

“He has you there,” Alonnen said. Tugging Rexei past the station, he led her down the hall to the door at the end. He touched the wood rather than the doorknob. She saw the faintest ripple of magic over its surface and stiffened. Sensing her movement, he glanced back at her. “Relax. Everything’s disguised by the Vortex. I’ve even made some progress with mastering that masking spell of yours.”

“Funny, I don’t remember teaching you,” Rexei countered. After her message had been delivered to the Hydraulics Guild, she had been drawn into the Mages Guild to explain just how strong she was—moderately so—and how thoroughly she could mask her abilities. That had led to her being inducted into the Teachers Guild for one month as she strove to train three other mages to replicate the meditation spells her mother had taught her. But that had been two women and a man, and that other man was taller and had possessed a rounded, more broad nose.

“Scrying mirror,” the Guild Master explained. “I watched what I could, when I could, and puzzled out the rest on my own. You’re a terrible teacher, you know.”

“I know. Aside from the Carters Guild, it’s the shortest I’ve ever been apprenticed,” she muttered. “I didn’t like doing it.”

“You’ll never make master rank in any discipline if you can’t learn how to teach better,” he warned her.

“It’s the
subject
I don’t like. I don’t even like saying the
M
word out loud, and I’ve spent over half my life hiding that such things even exist, never mind that
I’m
one of them. But I taught new carving tricks in the Engravers Guild, and everyone took to the lessons like ducks to water,” she countered. Then frowned. Her sense of direction was good. The hallways were still smooth and seamless, broken only by metal-framed doors. “How much of this complex is under the reservoir?”

“The outer layers are on the hillsides above the shoreline, the middle layers under the shoreline. The inner depths of the Vortex are mid-lake. There used to be an island there. It got destroyed when the last Convocation of Gods and Man ended rather abruptly, killing off Mekha. Unfortunately, not permanently. He came back, more hungry than before, which was when everything grew exponentially worse for us.”

“That foreign fellow was rather sure Mekha is gone. He swore it was what he believed had happened on a Truth Stone,” Rexei offered. “He said he’d heard about such things happening in the ancient days, back when we still had the Convocations. I don’t know how it happened
now
, but the embroidery, the carvings, anything directly tied to Him . . . all gone.”

“Oh, I know how. And every single one of us who pricked a thumb and bled in the protest books owes a certain Darkhanan priestess a huge thank-you, since she’s followed through on her promise.”

Using his palm to unlock one last door, he stepped through and pulled her into an astonishing chamber . . . if one could call it that, since it seemed to be both outside and inside at the same time. It was as if a great, multiguild glassworks team had crafted a huge, crystalline bowl and upended it in the reservoir, trapping a vast bubble of air in which a large, multileveled stone building now sat, anchored to what had to be the stub of bedrock left over from the explosion he had alluded to a few moments before.

“Breathtaking, isn’t it?” Alonnen asked her, grinning the moment she glanced his way. He removed his cap and green lenses as he did so, revealing kind hazel green eyes and longish strawberry blond curls pulled back into a short tail at the nape of his neck. “Welcome to the safest place for mages in all of Mekhana.”

Breathtaking was the word for it. It wasn’t just the fishbowl dome—literally, fish were swimming down near the bottom edges, barely visible in the glow from the crystals providing illumination for everything, while thin patches of ice distorted the light of what had to be Brother Moon overhead. It was also the man next to her. Seeing that grin, the welcoming warmth of it, made her feed odd. Nervous, excited, and perched on the edge of something big. Like her first solo ride on a motorhorse at messenger speeds.

“The view’s a lot better in the daylight, of course. Fish, plants . . . well, more of the latter in the warmer parts of the year. But the sunlight through the ice can be nice. Oh, don’t worry about the lights being seen at night. It’s all cloaked under layers and layers of illusions,” he dismissed, waiving his free hand. The other had tucked his scarf and cap under his arm, while his spectacles had gone into a clever pocket on the breast of his tunic. He caught her gaze drifting down over his lean chest and shrugged, misinterpreting her curiosity. “I know, I know, I’m not wearing a knitted shirt. Certainly not one I knitted myself.

“Truth be told, lad, I can practically spin wool into gold, it’s that fine and slub free, but anything after that point keeps eluding me. Stabbing my fingers with embroidery needles, hopelessly tangling any yarn—oh, speaking of which,” Alonnen added, nudging her toward the multistory structure ahead of them. “You were given a scrap of spell-knitting by Master Harpshadow. Do you still have it?”

She put her hand over her pouch. “Yes. I’m lucky I put it back in my pouch, not in my coat pocket, or it’d still be back at the temple, like my coat and my cap.”

That checked him mid-stride. Swinging around, he faced her, his cheerfulness gone, along with much of the color in his cheeks. “They have a cap from your head? With your hairs in it?”

Defensively, Rexei touched her chest. “
I
didn’t have any choice! One minute, I’m helping get the others out of the priests’ clutches, and the next thing I know, they’re shoving me out the door with the last of them, right past the bubble-ward! They had the doors locked and shielded before we knew what hit us.
Maybe
they won’t realize the cap on the floor is mine, and there’s no way they could tell which coat is mine, since there were five other Servers from the guild serving the temple at the time, and they got shoved out without their coats, too.

“I couldn’t exactly go knocking on the door asking for it back, either. Not when I was supposed to be playing a half-wit,” she added, giving him a hard stare. “I don’t care who’s signing my pay vouchers. I’m not going to take huge risks for anyone.”

“And we won’t ask you to,” Alonnen stated, touching Rexei’s forearm. “It’ll be okay. We’ve had hairs caught in tracking amulets before, and we’ve always been able to lead them astray once they get near the dam. We’ll need a few hairs from your head, but within a day, they’ll be convinced you’ve gone over the eastern mountains into northern Aurul.

“Now calm yourself and get inside,” he said, though she suspected the request was as much for his own sake as for hers. “You’ll be safe here.
And
well fed. The inner circle of the Vortex is served by a grandmaster chef from the Hospitallers Guild, a journeyman, and three apprentices.” He eyed her up and down, and flashed a brief smile. “I’d bet a lad like you could eat a whole chicken in a single sitting, plus have room for veg, bread, and pie. Or rather, I think it’s a stuffed rib roast tonight. Come on.”

She wasn’t hungry until he opened up the nearest door and ushered her into a warm foyer not too dissimilar to what she’d seen
in the larger houses attached to farms and workshops. The rich scents of roasting beef, herbed vegetables, fresh-baked bread, and more made her mouth water and made it difficult to struggle out of her pack, her coat, gloves, and knit hat.

A youth came at a call from the Guild Master; he took the bundle of her things and staggered upstairs. When she opened her mouth to protest, Alonnen cut her off with a lift of his free hand and a quick explanation.

“It’s Guild policy to check over all belongings for magical traces, in case something’s been slipped in by the priests or one of their agents that could help them track this place. That, and it’s also a policy that everything gets cleaned. There are spells that recycle the air to keep it fresh, but every little bit helps when trying to keep the air from being manky or stuffy. Among other reasons—just consider it a free laundry service. All your things will be accounted for, so don’t worry.”

She wanted to worry, but he took her hand and guided her up the steps in the young lad’s wake. That took them away from the delicious smells of the ground floor. But where the lad detoured at the third landing, they kept going up.

When they reached the top, Alonnen led Rexei into a wood-paneled room. While he tossed his hat and scarf onto pegs by the door, she looked around. There were three mirrors on the wall with the door along with shelves and cupboards, a woodstove on the other wall flanked by bookshelves, a desk with a vast window to her left, and an even larger set of windows on the right—floor to ceiling windows broken into four giant panes by what she realized were two sliding panels in the middle that could be retracted along grooves.

The windows overlooked a broad stone balcony with a view of the night-lit fishbowl. The crystals in the ceiling were radiating a dim sort of light, but her Messenger-trained mind said she could not possibly be seeing what was just outside the window.

It was impossible, flat-out impossible, for what she saw to have fit into the space. Tugging her hand free, she slowly approached the balcony and the vast window that covered it, trying to make sense of what was out there. Vortex was the right name for it, for it reminded her very much of the swirling funnel formed when one pulled the plug out of the bottom of a large basin of water. But this wasn’t water she was seeing.

This was pure magic, and instead of draining down to a point at the base—a bright point of light just a little bit lower than the balcony itself—the Vortex seemed to be spewing upward, infusing the waters of the reservoir almost all the way up to the surface. Except it was also constrained in the whole fishbowl warding sphere at the same time, yet she hadn’t
seen
any sign of this from outside the building.

“Illusion,” Alonnen stated. She jumped, not having heard him approach close enough to speak into her ear. He shrugged and nodded at the view. “That’s what the reservoir truly looks like, that funnel right there. Everything outside this room, it’s all cloaked in illusion after illusion. Grandmaster-level magery, and we’re damn lucky to have it. The old records say that the previous Guild Master of the Mages Guild had traveled to Aiar to petition for a new God. But we don’t know what happened after that. His replacement, she was the one who quickly caged the shattered Portal that had been on the island and wove all the protective illusions on top of all the previous wardings that had been here.