The Palace Job (36 page)

A shining man approached, a man who walked as though the sun were behind him, shining in all the colors of the rainbow. Orris remembered.

"No," he said.

"I am sorry," said the shining man, but his voice sounded like laughter. "A deal is a deal, and you did not get Loch's soul to save your own."

"Loch," said Orris. The name made him feel... something. "I... hate her, I think."

"Probably," said the shining man equably. "That's impressive, to hold onto it. You might even have haunted her, had you not had other commitments." He reached down to the shadow on the ground and, without ceremony, plucked Orris's feet free from it. Then he began to wind Orris's body up as though he were rolling a sheet of paper into a tube.

"No," Orris said again.

"You mortals often say that you wish to see interesting things," said the shining man. "It is
much
more interesting where you are going. At least, it is more colorful."

Orris was a little rolled-up ball, and the shining man held him, and because the shining man was just a silhouette with all the colors of the rainbow behind him, Orris was quite close before he realized that the shining man had opened his mouth.

It turned out that the gray landscape was not
entirely
devoid of pain.

Loch was in the kahva-house, looking for new insights in
The Uncovering of Bounty in Inhospitable Climates,
when Pyvic walked in.

She looked up at him for a long moment. He did the same with her. People seemed unsure of exactly what was going on, but there was a lot of staring.

When he became aware of it, he sat across from her. The crowd looked away. She raised an eyebrow.

"You shouldn't have come here," he said. He looked tired. She knew she was.

"It's the best kahva in town," she said. She'd stashed the sword, but had a knife up one sleeve. "I can't stay away just because things got complicated."

"Complicated?" He chuckled. It didn't reach his eyes. "I could arrest you right here...
Isafesira.
Six of my men are dead."

"And
none
of my men killed them. The Archvoyant's men took care of that." She raised an eyebrow. "Why did
you
come back here?"

"To see how stupid you were."

"Very, apparently. Are you angry because I'm robbing Silestin, or because you fell for me?"

"Fell for you?" Pyvic's lip curled in disgust. "How many mixed-race Urujar women do you think were both in Ros-Oanki and up here on the Spire? You didn't
fool
me, Prisoner Loch."

Her eyes narrowed. "So why the show?"

"They pulled me off of
real
cases to hunt you down," Pyvic said, quietly seething. "And I thought that maybe,
maybe
there was more to the story. More to why Silestin was so desperate to find you, why you were so desperate to take him down." He sat back. "But as it turns out, you're just a deserter and a thief."

"If you say so, Justicar. I'm sure you've done the necessary research to back up that claim."

"I could arrest you right here," he said again. "I could blow a whistle and have twenty guards here in a minute."

"You could do that." She sipped her kahva. "You could bring in your guards to attack an Urujar woman in an Urujar kahvahouse shortly after the arrest of the first and only Urujar Voyant. I'm sure the people here would be just fine with that." She smiled. She didn't try for the seductive look this time. "And then you'd have to explain why you were sitting here sipping kahva with me. I'm sure someone saw us leave together that night. How would that look on your report?"

"You think I'd let you go because I might look bad?" he asked. "You don't know me as well as you think."

"Then why haven't you blown your whistle?" She was suddenly tired. Damn the kahva, damn Pyvic, and damn her for coming here in the first place.

"Because there
is
more to the story." He leaned forward, his voice low and urgent.
"Tell me
why you're doing this."

"Find out yourself."
She snorted. "You wouldn't believe anything a thief tells you."

"Are you working with the Empire, Isafesira?"

She shook her head. "You know who I am. Start hunting. I'm going to walk out that door now." She tried not to make it a challenge. "It was nice seeing you again. I'm not sorry about that night."

She walked out. He didn't stop her, didn't blow his whistle. She got out of sight fast.

About ten heartbeats later, she watched from the alley as he came out, half-hidden in the doorway, trying to trace her steps. He might have been waiting long enough for her to feel confident and make a mistake. He might have been trying to let her get away.

If he were less honorable, she wouldn't have been interested in him—he'd have been just another crooked justicar to play as the job demanded. If he'd been more honorable, he'd have been easier to dupe, and she wouldn't have been interested then, either. More honorable or less, either would have been fine.

Instead, he was... somewhere in between.

She shouldn't have told him her real name.

She left quickly, checking often to make sure that he hadn't found her trail.

Seventeen

The day of the Victory Ball arrived.

In a ring around Heaven's Spire, the palaces of the Voyants were decked with bunting and ribbons. Illusory heroes fought in the sky, and patriotic music played from behind palace gates. Two palaces remained conspicuously unadorned. The palace of Voyant Cevirt was quiet because of the Voyant's scandalous arrest, its gates shut and its windows dark. The palace of Archvoyant Silestin was undecorated because he was hosting the Victory Ball, and, as he jokingly declared, he did not have the budget to decorate the outside as well as the inside.

Silestin's Victory Ball was the event of the season, and everyone on the Spire with political or financial pull had received an invitation. If the sheer grandeur of the ball were not enough incentive, there were always the whispers that Silestin was testing the waters with his beautiful young Urujar ward, Naria de Lochenville, who had announced that her older sister's criminal activities would not shame her into postponing her social debut.

The guests started arriving around sundown.

Loch, Kail, and Dairy had been standing in the guest line for some time, ignoring looks from nobles and businessmen.

Dairy was dressed in a page's gray doublet and breeches, which Loch had chosen because it went with the gray suede gloves Ululenia had bought him. With the gloves and the doublet, the silly birthmark on the kid's arm wasn't even visible.

Kail was dressed in the outlandish garb of a desert warrior, complete with the veil, the headdress, the flowing many-layered robes, and the brace of knives. He was serving as Loch's bodyguard.

Loch herself was wearing a shimmering copper dress with cream-colored frilly lace along the neckline and sleeves, along with a matching headpiece covered with cream-colored flowers. Going by the stares, she looked like an orange-flavored dessert, both conspicuous and ridiculous.

Right according to plan, then.

"Invitation, please," said one of the guards at the gate.

"Don't just stand there like an idiot, boy!" Loch said helpfully after a moment of silence. "Present my invitation!"

"You... er... said that you wished to carry it yourself, my lady," Dairy stammered. Gods, but he was a lousy liar. They'd had to work on a reason for the discomfort.

"I said no such thing!" Loch exclaimed indignantly. "However can you say such a thing, you horrible little boy! Tell the guards you're sorry for losing my invitation!"

"I'm sorry," Dairy mumbled. The guards shifted restlessly, as did the people behind Loch's party.

"Good boy. Now, let us go—"

"My lady," said the guard, "we need that invitation to let you in."

She fixed him with an arrogant stare. "I do not
have
my invitation, as should be clear to you! It was lost by this... this little slug of an attendant. Now, you will let me in this instant, or when Silestin himself hears that I was delayed by this, this, this
harassment,
you will find yourself in a
great
deal of trouble!"

"My lady," said one of the other guards, "there are many people trying to attend the party who did not receive invitations—"

"Are you implying that my mistress is lying?" Kail asked in a deadly voice from behind his veil.

"Er," the guard stammered.

"Because I swore an oath to my ancestors that I would uphold the honor of my mistress, however many men I must kill to do so."

"Er."

"I can hear my ancestors' dread voices echoing in my mind even now, asking if I must slay you." Kail leaned forward. "Let me level with you: my ancestors are really pushing hard for me to strike you dead right this moment. Anything you can do to help me out would be fantastic."

"I'm sure this is a misunderstanding," the first guard said quickly. "Why don't you just go right inside? In fact, you can wear these red ribbons, which will mark you as special guests with full access." He shoved ribbons in their direction.

"I am certain that I would have been on such a list," Loch said airily. "Come, boy." She strode in with Kail and Dairy hustling to catch up.

"So that's it?" Dairy asked quietly once they were inside.

"So far," Loch said, glancing in both directions. The path led through a sumptuously ornamented front garden to the main palace itself.

"Red ribbons?" Kail muttered behind his veil. "Doesn't really go with my outfit."

Loch smiled. "I don't imagine we'll be wearing them long."

The aqueducts of Heaven's Spire were beneath the surface of the city. For large buildings, great chambers stored water in reserve and then filtered the new water in late in the evening to avoid shortages during the day.

The great chambers were also covered, and anyone who got inside would face a fifty-foot drop into the water below, since the ancient builders of the Spire had assumed that anyone doing maintenance on the water systems would be floating in mid-air through the power of magic.