The Mirrored City (12 page)

Colette cocked her head. “How do I know
you’re
not the killer?”

“Because Isik can vouch for my whereabouts when Lawrence was killed.” Maddox sighed. “Besides, I have better shit to do with my time.”

“Like involve yourself in an ongoing murder investigation and then walk out in the middle of it?” she challenged, a plume of smoke blowing through her nostrils. Her face was unreadable.

“It’s therapeutic to keep busy,” Maddox said.

Maddox rented quarters in a forgettable inn on the Road of the Dormant Wayfarer. The room was cramped, minimally furnished with a cot and a shelf to serve as an altar to whatever gods’ idols the guest brought with him.

Maddox looked at his face in the tiny round mirror over the empty wash basin. “Look buddy,” he said to his reflection. “I can’t do this without you. I’ll carry you as far as you need me to take you, but there’s one thing I can’t do.”

He pulled out a bottle of brandy from his satchel and set it down next to a packet of euphorium and a long wooden pipe. Oddly, in Dessim, the brandy was harder to acquire than the drugs. The euphorium and alcohol were a deadly combination. He spilled half the packet into the bottle and chugged. He clutched the Sword and drifted into oblivion.

And then oblivion spit him onto the musty planks of a creaking boat. He found himself on the deck of a rotting ship, beneath a black sky where ghostly tattered sails flapped in the icy wind. The phantom traces of a glowing skeletal crew moved about the rigging. All around was an endless expanse of gray roiling fog.

A chilling voice intoned, “The prodigal returns.”

Maddox startled and leapt to his feet, hand holding his chest. “By the Guides.”

He turned to face a woman in black. She wore a spiked crown covered in a veil of black spidery lace. Her eyes and mouth were sewn shut, and her hands were folded in front of her, with her forearms parallel to the deck, her fingers steepled arcanely. “You have been away a long time, Architect, but you and I knew each other once. Perhaps we will meet again.” Her voice was a raspy whisper, but her stitched mouth did not move.

Maddox rubbed his temples. “Amnayleth… Guide of the Seal of Mystery.” Of the thirteen seals, the Seal of Mystery was practically useless, mainly because no one who had it could tell another living soul what it actually did. The Sword had used his body to bind it once for… Maddox’s memories faded.

“You seek to unravel the broken thread that winds through the labyrinth.”

“I don’t have time or patience for riddles,” Maddox said.

“You have time but lack patience,” Amnayleth hissed coyly.

“My body is dying, and this vision will end when it does,” Maddox insisted. “What can you tell me about Lawrence?”

“You know the Grand Design. Attain the Seal of Seals and you will know all things that will come to pass and how to bring them about.”

“Not for all the money on the moon,” Maddox said flatly. “It would take me a year to practice at least. And it’s fucking dangerous.”

Maddox had pieced together the Grand Design during a bender of deliberately fatal drug overdoses, not knowing what it was until it was too late. Now that knowledge was burned into his very soul. It could grant him omniscience and, by proxy, near omnipotence. Seeing the future came with a price—the loss of any sense of choice. Not only did it show him how best to achieve his desires, it also determined
what
he would ultimately desire.

When the Inquisition ripped his mind apart, he didn’t resist. He believed his knowledge and immortality made him a danger to Creation. He found a refuge in the Sword—it had no great ambitions or any deep passion about forbidden magic. Plus the Sword suppressed the crazy mystic visions he was having now.

The veiled woman brushed past him. “Knowledge comes with a price, Architect.”

Maddox frowned. “What’s the price?”

“Knowing it,” Amnayleth said.

Maddox complained, “Just spit it out. Tell me what I need to know.”

Amnayleth whispered, “The answers you seek are in the Palace of Keys.”

“Wait,” Maddox said, nearly falling over in shock. “That’s an
actual
location in the city. Did you just… give me a straight answer?”

“There are no straight answers to crooked questions.”

He feigned relief. “Oh good, I was worried you were starting to make sense. How about where I can find the thing that attacked me?”

“You stepped over the lover’s body when you sought the two-faced killer.”

“It had three faces,” Maddox said, but he knew it was useless. He could sense the vision ending and the weight of Amnayleth’s silence.
Of all the Guides, I had to get Mystery
.

He felt the world around him dissolve. The toxic combination of euphorium powder and firebrandy was killing him.

Darkness swallowed him. And when it did, he would wake up in his room, the Sword at his side.

T
WELVE

Making A Play

H
EATH

1.

Night will fall upon Baash & Dessim
The Dark Stars will fall to earth
The broken mirror will have a thousand reflections.
The Eye of the Sun will turn to the Mirrored City.

2.

The Queen of Lies will rise in the West
A king is reborn in Dessim to humble beginnings
The Red Army will bleed over all Creation.
Baash & Dessim will be forever gone.

—PROPHECIES OF PROSPERO
, A FAMOUS DIVINER IN DESSIM

THE STREETS OF
Baash were clean and narrow, and although they were the same as the streets in Dessim, the plain alabaster city was almost completely unrecognizable. The buildings were unadorned on the outside, monolithic blocks of white granite, painted orange by the setting sun. Chants and songs came from all parts of the city as the faithful performed their final daily prayer to Ohan.

This made it an ideal time to go undetected. Curfew would come shortly after, and phalanxes of Patrean guards would patrol the narrow streets in meticulously timed patterns, making it nearly impossible to move at night undetected. The good news was that Heath had practiced moving through those same streets in Dessim and had learned their quirks and shortcuts.

He wore a black hood and half mask over the lower part of his face. His tunic left his scarred arms bare except for the leather gauntlets that held his trusty springblades. For a man pushing into his fourth decade, he was still in good shape. He kept to the shadows that lengthened as the daylight receded, like fingers beckoning him forward. Bracing himself between the walls of a narrow alley, he climbed to the roof of a squat building just before a patrol marched past.

His reflexes were incredible since becoming a Stormlord. When he needed to react, it felt like things were happening in slow motion. It also helped that he’d stopped taking his morning remedies. The medicine made him sicker than the illness growing inside him, and he had more energy than he’d had in months.

It felt good to be out in the field, doing honest work with nothing but his wit and skill to keep him alive. Mastery of the elements was intoxicating, but sometimes magic felt like cheating. This was like old times… except Sword wasn’t by his side to enjoy it.

He bolted across the roof and vaulted to the next building. Although he landed fine, he was sweating and had a stitch in his side. “I’m getting too old for this,” he whispered to himself.

Sword would have agreed and made some kind of joke. Heath missed his partner but meant what he said: Maddox wasn’t a criminal and didn’t need to be. He’d been a young wizard with a promising future that involved writing papers and giving lectures. Heath and Jessa owed it to Maddox to give him the life he wanted.

Heath also had to admit, as he tiptoed across the top of a high archway, that he missed Sword. Since becoming Maddox, the Sword had changed and not for the better. It was arrogant and constantly annoyed with Heath over everything. It would be happier in another body with a more affable persona.

Heath paused.

A pair of women, a blonde one laughing quite loudly, darted through the street hand in hand. She was shushed by the Turisian woman as they hustled down an adjacent alleyway.

Heath shrugged and moved on, finding purchase on a higher level of buildings. He made his way without incident.

Before him was the palatial square compound of House Qaadar, the First House of Baash and home of the ruling Patriarch. Like all buildings in Baash, it bore no outward decoration aside from some magnificent stained glass windows. Its size and deepening shadow were the only indications of its importance. Heath hunkered down and waited for night to descend.

He slowly willed clouds to move in over the city, blotting out the stars and moon. He did it as subtly as he could manage. Satisfied it was dark enough, he made his move.

House Qaadar had a mirrored structure in Dessim. Over there, it was a government office with embassy quarters for the representatives and dignitaries appointed by the other six Free Cities. He’d visited the Rivern office on numerous occasions and “gotten lost” in the labyrinthine structure many times, so he knew the layout perfectly.

Under the cover of night, he leapt from the roof where he was perched and shot one of his springblades into the wall of the compound. The abraevium alloy pierced the marble while a thin filament anchored him to the blade. The metal was elastic yet sharp. Once he hit the wall, he jammed his other springblade into the stone. He retracted the first and repeated the process of stabbing the wall as he made his ascent.

The cuts from the blade were razor thin and difficult to see.

He mounted the summit of the building. Like in Dessim, the square compound surrounded an open atrium filled with lush palms and flowering fruit trees. Each of the three stories featured an exposed balcony overlooking the gardens. Heath wiped his brow and took a minute to catch his breath.

Patrols were light. Single Patrean guards strolled around casually. It would be a mistake to think they weren’t alert. Patreans didn’t get bored as easily as other humans, which made them more ideal than dogs for security.

Heath made his way across the roof to the master bedroom, taking extra care to tread quietly.

He winced at the loud pop of his knee as he crept forward.
This is probably my last time doing anything like this. Better enjoy it.

Heath waited for the passing patrols to walk by before leaping over the edge of the roof and swinging onto the balcony. He entered the room quietly, unnoticed by any patrols.

The Patriarch’s bedroom was gold plated. Heath staggered for a second to admire the fact that every inch of the architecture had been wrapped in gold leaf. While it lacked in the majestic arches and domed ceilings of the other houses, it utterly destroyed them in sheer opulence. In the center rested a four-poster bed that reached the ceiling with heavy green curtains. To the sides were archways to the attendant’s quarters. The Patriarch and Matriarch had a retinue of servants ready to attend their every need.

Heath walked softly to the bed and pulled the curtain open.

Ibiq Qaadar was a rail thin man with white beard and hair. His wife was considerably younger and more attractive. They lay peacefully in the sheets, their bare legs intertwining.

Heath popped his right springblade and rubbed the edge with a poison-soaked cloth he kept in his belt pouch. Satisfied the numbing venom was applied, he drew his blade against Ibiq’s wiry gray-haired thigh. Abraevium knives were the sharpest in all Creation, so sharp they could part skin without anyone knowing. With slow and surgical precision, Heath opened the length of the femoral artery in Ibiq’s thigh.

Like Heath, Ibiq was also a healer and could remedy his injury if he awoke. He did not, and Heath watched while the old man bled out. It took less than a minute for him to stop breathing.

Satisfied, Heath stepped back and charged one of the stained glass windows full force. The glass shattered around him. In Dessim, the housing behind the central palace was small homes with rooftop gardens. It was the same here. He just needed to live through the landing.

He willed his body to relax and prepared to roll when he hit.

Pain shot through his body as he tumbled across the grass rooftop beneath him. His shoulder took the brunt of it and flared in painful response. The cuts from the glass covered his arms and face. He rolled onto his back and pressed his hands against his arms.