The Palace Job (49 page)

Icy opened his mouth to respond indignantly, and then stopped when he saw the dagger in Naria's hand.

"Too late, Isa. He already told me where your little gang is meeting." Naria swept Loch's legs out from under her with a smooth kick and rolled to her feet in the same motion. Then she lunged, the blade moving in a smooth arc toward Loch's throat.

Loch caught Naria's wrist, lunged back to her feet, and body-checked Naria into a tree.

"The second," Loch said, "is that with all the money and power she has at her command, she'd never settle for crystal lenses to cover her ruined eyes... unless they're magical lenses. My money'd be on mental illusions to compensate for the blindness."

"They do more than that," Naria hissed, and vanished from view.

"She is not simply invisible," Icy said quietly. "Her movements are not disturbing the grass or creating any noise."

"And the third," Loch said, "is that she was too delicate to handle a real fight. The only time she ever beat me in anything is when she cheated. Which makes her..." She broke off, spun, and threw a hard, nasty punch directly behind her.

As Naria shimmered into visibility directly behind Loch, her knife raised to slit her sister's throat, the punch caught her square in the face. She went down bonelessly and didn't move.

"...easy to predict."

Icy dropped to his knees, the breath sucked out of his stomach. "She was..."

"The Archvoyant's First Blade. Last one anyone would ever suspect. Add in whatever shadow-magic Silestin picked up for her, and she's a damn fine assassin." Loch's face relaxed. "And she was always good at twisting men around her finger." She shook her head, then picked up Naria's slim knife.

"I told her where we were meeting." Icy hated himself for saying the words, but would have hated himself more for not saying them.

"I know." Loch reached down with the knife, and Icy shut his eyes.

He heard fiber snap and opened his eyes to see Loch pulling the lenses away from Naria's face. The cord which bound them to Naria's head was neatly cut, and Naria's knife lay discarded in the grass.

"We'll be long gone by the time she wakes up," Loch said. "And I don't think she'll be pulling any more assassin-y surprises." She rose to her feet, dropped the crystal lenses to the ground, and stomped hard. Icy winced as magical crystal crunched in the darkness. "Come on."

Icy followed Loch out of the clearing, though he did turn once to look back.

Ambassador Bi'ul followed Archvoyant Silestin into a small sitting room. The Archvoyant gestured, and Bi'ul sat.

"The problem, Ambassador, is that I know what you want," Silestin said without preamble.

Bi'ul nodded, unoffended. "The ward set by the ancients was quite specific."

"You need souls." Silestin smiled. "And much as I appreciate your assistance, I have no intention of offering mine."

"So we find ourselves at this impasse." Bi'ul smiled, toying with a goblet of wine.

"Pretend for a minute, though, that there was no impasse." Silestin sat down and filled his pipe. "Pretend I've got some souls—not voluntarily given, but mine nonetheless. Convince me that allowing your kind into the world doesn't lead to the destruction of everything I hold dear."

Bi'ul blinked. "You value nothing save your own power." Silestin waved at him irritably. "Ah. You fear that if the Glimmering Folk return, you would lose power. Charming." Bi'ul smiled. "What
you fail
to consider is that as mortals find fragments of the ancients' power, someone, somewhere,
will
allow us into the world. It is only a question of when and where."

"Not good enough." Silestin puffed on his pipe.

"The world as you know it will end, one way or the other," Bi'ul noted. "Would you prefer to be the capital of the new and glorious empire of the Glimmering Folk, with the world bowing to what was once your Republic and you living in luxury as a regional governor? Or would you prefer that your Republic be one of the conquered nations ground into dust, your last thoughts before your soul is forcibly extracted that you
could
have had the power, but were too worried about the risks?" He smiled, rainbows shimmering across his face. "But this is merely an academic question, as you have no souls to offer me."

Silestin withdrew a slim emerald crystal wand from his vest. "The prisoners who work on the underside of the Spire? They clean the floating stones and keep everything running."

"Wasteful." Bi'ul shrugged. "Before the ancients fled this world, maintenance was performed by golems."

"The prisoners say that it's unlucky to talk near the stones." Silestin spun the crystal wand between his fingers. "They say that your voice gets caught in the stone, that the stones can steal your soul."

"An entertaining story, Archvoyant."

Silestin grinned. "I believe you about the golems. I'm certain that the ancients never intended for anyone living to be near the stones for long. They would
certainly
never have intended the voices of the workers to imprint in the crystals in such a way as to allow soul-binding." He touched his ring to the crystal wand, and its emerald glow flushed to a dull and angry red. "Luckily for you, Bi'ul, the old men weren't infallible."

Bi'ul stared at the crystal for a long moment, his mind tracing the energy pattern.

He smiled. "Luckily for me indeed, Archvoyant."

"Kutesosh gajair'is!"

"That the last of them?" Kail asked, panting, as Desidora's swing sent one of the snarling guards crashing into the far wall of the small dining room where they'd been ambushed.

"No more on my end," the death priestess said coolly.

"I'm good," Tern chimed in. She'd gotten a couple of the guards with an alchemical bolt that splashed a quick-drying glue everywhere. "So, Diz, what
are
these guys?"

"I don't know." Desidora looked at them without expression. "Their auras are polluted somehow. I don't know what Silestin did to them, but it isn't natural."

"And that's
you
saying that," Tern noted, and then coughed when Desidora stared at her. "Well, it is. Is it reversible? Maybe rather than fighting our way out, we could cure them."

"Unlikely," Desidora said, dismissing it with a wave, "and dangerous. It would require too much investiture of power to even be possible." She looped Ghylspwr back into her belt and started walking.

"Wait," said Tern, leaning against a table that Kail had knocked over before leaping up onto the chandelier and bringing it down on a bunch of the guards. "That's it? It's too
hard
for you, so we just leave these people?"

"Tern," Kail said quietly, "let it go."

"Why? It's cold, Kail. The whole reason Loch put this job together was to hurt Silestin. If he's got people enslaved, freeing them has got to hurt him as much as stealing a
book."

Kail was still looking at Desidora as she peered around the corner for more guards. "She shouldn't use that death-priestess power unless she really needs to. It's not..." He grimaced. "She just shouldn't have to, is all."

"She doesn't
need
to? It's too much
investiture?"
Tern raised an eyebrow. "How is it that as somebody who took awhile to get on the zombie-loving bandwagon,
I'm
the one pushing for her to try something? Either she's with us, or she's not."

"Tern..."

"No! If I could pick a lock to get us outside right now, I wouldn't be complaining that it was
too hard."

"It's dangerous. When we were in the—"

"I'll try," Desidora said from the doorway. "You're right, Tern. It's worth making an effort." She moved to stand over an unconscious guard. "You should both stand back and avoid making any sudden movements. With the complexity of the aural tampering, I will have to..." She looked at Kail, then at Tern.

"You're going to get really pale, and any nearby artwork is going to get spiky?" Tern guessed.

Desidora smiled. "Most likely."

Kail stepped forward. "You were right before. This isn't the time to try. We've got more pressing—"

"Too late," Desidora hissed, and her smile was a scarlet scratch across her alabaster face. "Did you
think
I would not see?" She flung out a hand, and shadowy coils sprang from her fingers and wrapped around Kail's throat. "No unicorn to hold me back this time."

Kail fell to his knees, eyes bulging in their sockets. Desidora's eyes were jet black, and her hair twisted and writhed in a wind that touched no one else in the room.

Then Tern's sleep-dart caught her in the shoulder, and she had time to shout, "Pitiful
fool!"
in a truly baleful voice before keeling over.

"See, we tried, and it didn't work," Tern said briskly, hoping Kail was going to get up on his own and not make her go over and help him up, because that was about the only thing that would make her feel worse. "The important thing is that we tried, and now we can move on with a clear conscience."

"Kutesosh gajair'is!"
Ghylspwr called from Desidora's waist. "I know. We're going to help her, Ghyl."

Kail got to his feet shakily. His back was to Tern—he was still looking at Desidora—but she could see him sucking in great lungfuls of air, and she gave him a moment.

Finally, he said, "No, we aren't."

Tern sighed. "Look, I'm sorry. You were right, okay? Both of you. I don't know what happened, but—"

"Kutesosh gajair'is!"

"I
know!"
Tern snapped, striding past Kail to kneel beside Desidora's fallen form. "Well help her. There's no need to use the... phrase you use... for evil..."

She spun, but the crossbow was knocked from her hands before she could bring it to bear.

"Change in plans," Kail said, smiling, but his eyes were dead like those of the guards as he caught her arm and stepped in. "The three of you will be staying."

Tern didn't have time to scream.

Twenty-Four

It had all seemed wonderful, stealing back what the evil Archvoyant had stolen. It had seemed like justice, except more exciting.

But now, as Dairy stood in the shadows of Voyant Cevirt's palace, it didn't feel that way.

Miss Loch looked angry and sad. Icy stared at the ground, and Ululenia kept wiping at her eyes, although she smiled and told Dairy that she was fine.

"But Mister Hessler said he would be with us!" Dairy insisted. "He said!"

"Magister Hessler was very brave," Loch said quietly.

"Courageous as the mother bird luring the hunter from her children," Ululenia added, and wiped at her eyes again. Her horn lit her pale face in the darkness.

"He said he was going to escape," Dairy said. "I wouldn't have left, but he said he could escape."

"Maybe he did." Loch looked over at the walls.

"Loch," Ululenia said quietly, "I was in his mind."

"Maybe he escaped," Loch said firmly, looking at her squarely, and Ululenia nodded, looked at Dairy, and tried to smile again.

"What about Kail and Miss Tern and Sister Desidora?" Dairy asked.

"It's Mister Kail," said a voice from the shadows, and everyone jumped as Kail stepped out. "And Pm alone. Captain, they got Tern and Diz."