The Telastrian Song (15 page)

It was interesting, but not of much use. A couple of trade caravans went east each year, so the grimoire could have been brought back with one of them. Were they written in a script that could be read, Giura would have thought that the most likely explanation. However, if a professor of languages could not even identify it, let alone read it, how would an ordinary man living in a small apartment have any use for it, or any reason to copy it? Unless he could read it, and for that, someone must have taught him.

‘Is there anyone you are aware of who can read this code?’

‘Well, the person that wrote it obviously. Other than that I really don’t know. I have heard magic is still practised in a limited way in the east, perhaps it’s the language the mages there use to keep their secrets from ordinary people.’

The Professor continued to talk, but Giura had stopped listening, retreating instead into his thoughts. If it was a language used by mages, the only way for someone in Ostenheim to learn it was if he was shown how. Giura cursed himself for killing Nerli, but there hadn’t been any other option. He’d had all the answers Giura sought, but they were lost to him now. It might be worth investigating if Nerli had ever made a trip to the east, but there was nothing in his apartment other than the grimoires to indicate that. Giura had a gut feeling that was not the explanation.

‘Thank you for your time, Professor. I think that will be all for now. It’s probably best that you don’t mention the grimoires to anyone else. Be sure to tell that to your colleague also.’

G
iura pushed aside
the matter of the grimoires and returned his focus to the young man named Soren. With so many issues vying for his attention, he tried to compartmentalise them in order to maintain his focus, other than a brief daily review where he considered everything together to see if there were any connections to be found.

The conversation with Dornish had been enlightening, and encouraging, but did not go far enough to answer all the questions he had. Indeed, it raised more. That necessitated a long and dusty afternoon in the Grey Tower’s archives. There were few things that escaped the Intelligenciers’ notice, although some of those things could rapidly find their way to obscurity in the Tower, especially when someone powerful and wealthy wanted it that way. The information was often still there however, if one knew where to look and had the motivation to do so.

Scraps of information, names, meetings, orders, transfers of money. It was a puzzle that had to be put together to give Giura something approaching the complete picture. He was aware how much he wanted Soren to be an ally, and knew that could colour his interpretation of the information he had. It was looking good, but he could not yet be certain and Giura didn’t like to gamble without knowing what the result would be ahead of time. What he still did not know for sure was whether or not Soren was in league with the Duke, or his bitter enemy. It seemed that there was no middle ground; it was either one or the other.

How to tell which it was with certainty still posed a problem. There was nothing to indicate that Soren was in the city working with the Duke, but likewise there was nothing that suggested he was there to oppose him. All Giura knew for sure was that he had a dispute with Kastor, and a collection of facts that indicated Soren and the Duke were enemies, but there was no way to find out what that was over, short of having someone that might know hauled in and questioned. It would reveal that Giura was watching however, and he didn’t want anyone to be aware of his interest in the matter.

The time for watching was over, and he had to take action with at least one of his problems. If Kastor was going to continue sending men after Soren, things could get out of control and attract the interest of the City Watch, or other Intelligenciers. That made it the more pressing of his issues, so he decided to make contact with Soren and find out, one way or the other.

I
n Soren’s
previous experience as an assassin, watching his prey for an opening and then exploiting it had worked well. While those targets had been powerful men, they were far removed from the resources and power available to the Duke. Soren was beginning to develop a grudging respect for Amero having managed to kill his predecessor. He had spent years planning it, had invested thousands of crowns and manipulated and used dozens of people. He had weaved a complex web of deceit and orchestrated a full war to achieve his goal. But achieve it he had.

Soren wondered if he was fooling himself by thinking that he could manage the same feat by himself. He had thought if worst came to worst, he could throw his own hopes of survival to one side and just walk up to Amero and kill him. As he could now see, that was impossible. Thus far he hadn’t even been able to see a way to get within a blade’s length of him.

His days spent hanging around the city criers in Crossways trying to get word of Amero’s next public engagement were getting him nowhere. All he was achieving was personal frustration at his inability to see any way through Amero’s security, and increasing the risk that someone he knew would spot him.

Standing in the middle of that crowd of people, he felt incredibly isolated. The words he’d exchanged with Kastor were as close to a proper conversation as he’d had since leaving Venter. Coupled with the seeming impossibility of his task, his spirits were low. He was beginning to wonder if it wouldn’t be better to take a ship back to Venter, collect Alessandra and start running again. Maybe there was somewhere they would be beyond Amero’s reach. He shook his head, remembering he had tried that and it hadn’t worked. He was frustrated, but he had to see this through.

His new inn was in a better area and thus more expensive than the previous one. It was not beyond the means of travelling swordsmen, but was not the type of place many of them would patronise. He hoped that it would throw Kastor off his scent. Assumption was the mother of all disaster however, and as he approached it he spotted a man lounging by the doorway, cloak casually draped back over his shoulders putting the pair of blades strapped to his waist on clear display.

Soren groaned inwardly, but kept walking toward the door. As usual, there was a chance the man wasn’t there for him, but as usual, he probably was. He would have run, but he wanted to know if this was another one of Kastor’s men, meaning that problem would need to be dealt with next. Soren got to the door and reached for the handle with his left hand, keeping his right ready to draw, but the man hadn’t even looked at him as he approached the inn. The handle squeaked and clicked as Soren turned it, the door creaked as he pushed it open. So far, so good. Perhaps his paranoia had gotten the better of him this time.

‘Not quite as warm a welcome as it was the other night,’ the man said.

Soren had jumped back and drawn his sword before the man finished speaking. The man had dark brown shoulder length hair and a neat beard. He was relaxed and confident and hadn’t moved from where he leaned against the wall. He turned his head to look at Soren.

‘You won’t need that,’ the man said, looking at Soren’s sword. ‘Not right now, at any rate.’

‘Who are you?’

‘Vallis Giura is my name, and you are Banneret of the Duke’s Cross Soren. Introductions dealt with, I thought we could have a chat.’

It always bothered Soren when someone had the advantage of him. All the more so when Soren had no idea who that person was, and when no one was supposed to know he was in the city. One thing was clear though: if he was another one of Kastor’s men, the words thug, goon or lackey were inappropriate to describe him. He was cut from a different, far higher quality cloth.

‘About what?’ Soren said, still with sword in hand.

‘Things that are best discussed away from curious ears.’

‘You told me your name, but not who you are,’ Soren said. ‘I’m not going anywhere until I know that at least.’

‘Would my saying that what I do is also best discussed away from prying ears be enough?’

Soren shook his head.

‘Didn’t think so.’ He tapped the hilt of his dagger.

Soren followed the movement and squinted to see what he was drawing attention to. A small insignia engraved on the pommel. A staff, a skull and a sword. Magic, death and the steel that causes it. The symbol of the Intelligenciers.

‘If you think I’m going to go to the Grey Tower with you willingly, think again.’

‘I didn’t expect you’d be interested in accompanying me there,’ Giura said, ‘and I’m under no illusion of being able to force you to go.’

Soren wondered why that was. How much did this Intelligencier know about him? Why had he already not tried to have Soren arrested? ‘My inclination is to tell you to piss off then.’

‘It would be a shame if the Duke were to find out you’re back in the city.’

Soren’s eyes narrowed. Why would an Intelligencier not scurry straight to the Duke with this information? What had he to gain from it?

‘He doesn’t already know?’

‘And it can stay that way,’ Giura said.

‘It certainly will, if I kill you.’

Giura smiled, still relaxed, still confident, still leaning against the wall. ‘Ah, but then you’ll never find out what it is I have to say.’

A
facial expression
, even one that lasts only a moment, can reveal far more than words or actions ever can. Giura had long made a study of them and considered his ability to be able to read a face even more important than his ability to use a sword. In the second that Soren considered his threat, Giura knew for certain that he was not in the city on the Duke’s bidding, quite the contrary. It was only confirmed by what he had said.

B
yarsham retained
his calm as he surveyed the apartment’s destruction. In his youth his reaction would have been very different, but approaching his second century he had long since mastered his emotion. The most promising of the Duke’s apprentices was gone, his apartment torn apart, and both Byarsham’s grimoire and the student’s notebook had disappeared. He had left the student alone for a few weeks to work on completing his grimoire undisturbed. There was no way of telling how long ago the apartment had been ransacked.

There were none in the city who would be able to read either book, or likely even identify their purpose, but it was an irritation. His grimoire would have to be replaced and re-written by hand. Not only was it a time-consuming task that he would rather not have to repeat, it was a source of personal embarrassment, as the loss would have to be revealed to the rest of the Twelve.

To Byarsham, the loss of the grimoire was more concerning than that of the student. The student could be replaced—he was only one of the Duke’s anyway—but the grimoire could cause all sorts of other problems. He very much wanted it back, but at the very least he needed to ensure that it was destroyed and it didn’t get out of the city and back to the Fount-Bloods. That was not a thought he wanted to dwell on.

The irritation was compounded by the fact that his petulant paymaster would likely have a temper tantrum when he was informed of the setback. As tiresome as he was, the Duke was still a necessary part of the Twelve’s plans and Byarsham would have to accommodate him. The Ostians, all westerners in fact, hated magery. They were blind to the benefits it brought, even though they were present and visible on every street of the city. Pathetic hypocrisy, but nothing less than he had come to expect from them. He needed Amero’s patronage to continue in concealment until they were ready to reveal their plot, as trying as that was. The disappearance of the apprentice was a headache that Byarsham did not need, and considering the state of the apartment it was safe to assume that he was irrecoverable.

He would have to find out what happened to this one, and check on the others. The apprentice was not especially powerful, but unless he was caught unaware he should have been more than well able to deal with most types of personal assault. It would have taken several men to overpower him, which was noteworthy. Perhaps the Duke’s offer of sanctuary and peace to conduct this training was overstated.

D
al Lupard was
in a difficult position. Technically he was supposed to be carrying out his responsibilities in Venter. Arguably it was an extension of those responsibilities that brought him back to Ostenheim, but the case in his favour was tenuous and he wouldn’t be making it to a sympathetic audience. His appearance back at the Grey Tower might have been accepted, but it wasn’t welcomed. It wouldn’t be long before those who had conspired to have him exiled became aware of his return to the city. Life would become more difficult when they did.

It had taken quite a bit of time and effort on his part to discover what had happened to Massari. His whore had remained in Venter with dal Bragadin, but Massari had completely disappeared. Dal Lupard eventually learned that he had taken passage on a ship from Voorn to Ostenheim. That was interesting. There was only one reason Ostians returned to Ostenheim from Venter, and it was enough to justify dal Lupard’s return if he could prove it. Massari was up to no good and dal Lupard wanted to get to the bottom of it. He was also glad of the opportunity to get home and hopeful that apprehending an enemy of the state would allow him to remain.

There was much to be done. He needed to find out as much about Massari as he could. There was something that had played on his mind for the entire voyage. The whore, Bevrielle, or whatever she was now calling herself, had associated with a young man whom the Duke had made several discreet, but determined efforts to kill.

The Duke was so careful that few people knew the extent of his machinations. Dal Lupard had only encountered snippets about this young man, but he would be about the same age as Massari, and to the best of his recollection was of similar appearance. He had not heard if this young man—Soren was his name—had been killed, but if he remained alive he was a prize indeed. The Duke had spent very large amounts of money sending men after him. Dal Lupard was sure that bringing Soren to the Duke would ensure all of the things he had lost were returned. No more Venter, no more grey, rainy days. Was it too much to hope that Massari and Soren were one and the same?

Massari or Soren, it mattered little though. Whoever he truly was, he was an enemy of the state and that made him valuable to dal Lupard.

Dal Lupard had never been popular—he knew that and didn’t care—but the favour of powerful men had made him powerful by association. Now that was gone and no one had any reason to pretend to like him or seek his favour. It made getting information nigh on impossible and he knew time was not in his favour. Once Amero found out he was back in the city, the best he could hope for was a return to Voorn and a lifetime appointment there.

The obstacles to his hunt were greater than he expected. Even the sources that could be bought or threatened would have nothing to do with him because they thought he was so out of favour with the Duke that even talking to him would contaminate them with his plight.

Now he was cut off from all his old sources of information. Even though he was still an Intelligencier, he no longer held rank at the Grey Tower, and no one would do anything he said. Those who knew him from the old days took great pleasure in ignoring him, but he took note of each and every one who did and would be sure to repay them when he was back in favour, when he had handed Soren over to the Duke. He would simply have to do all of the hard work himself, and that could take time.

G
iura brought
him to a coffee house in Bankers. Soren had been expecting the Grey Tower, and they had been heading that direction for part of their walk from the inn. He had spent that time working out the best way to proceed, whether to make a break for it, flee the city for a while and try again later or hear out what this man, Giura, had to say. Intelligenciers were slippery characters and his approach to Soren could have merely been a sly way to march Soren to the Grey Tower without any resistance.

Soren had heard the things that happened to people who were brought to the Grey Tower. Most of them were never seen again. He had briefly encountered Intelligenciers when fighting the barbarians in the East. A few of them always travelled with an army to take care of intelligence gathering matters, but they had been involved more heavily in the East in order to discover what had motivated the barbarian tribes to unusual levels of aggression. Their methods were varied, but did involve a good deal of screaming during the night after a battle where a large number of prisoners were taken. It was something of a relief when Giura stopped outside a coffee house in Bankers, overlooking the Westway.

They took a corner table, and Giura left Soren alone while he went to the counter to get them coffee. It was the ideal opportunity for Soren to make good his escape, but having been spared a visit to the Grey Tower he was intrigued and wanted to hear what the Intelligencier had to say.

He came back with two steaming mugs of coffee and set them down on the table. ‘I hope you like it,’ Giura said. ‘It’s a blend of beans from Shandahar and the Spice Isles, my personal favourite.’

Soren took a sip. It was good; rich, sweet and with a hint of bitterness. ‘What do you want from me?’

Could he know about the diamonds? How did he even know Soren was in the city, or who he was? The diamonds would make an attractive prize for even the most dedicated of state servants. Could someone among the loyalist exiles in Venter have revealed the information? The odious ambassador for instance? With a personality like his, competence must be the only thing keeping him alive—and Ranph had said he was a former Intelligencier.

‘Information. For now.’ Giura took a deep breath over his mug and then leaned back into his chair, adopting a relaxed pose. ‘Tell me, did you know Amero was going to assassinate Duke Valens?’

Soren coughed. It wasn’t a question he was expecting. It was not the diamonds then, but it was an incisive question and revealed that Giura already knew a great deal about him. How much he knew remained to be seen, but it was clearly far more than Soren liked. He looked around the coffee house, amazed that Giura would ask such a sensitive question in a public place. However, no one was paying them any attention. There was a background noise of conversation, laughter, the sound of coffee beans being ground, water being heated. It drowned out all the individual voices, merging them into one amorphous murmur of activity. He could see why Giura had chosen the coffee house; he was hiding them in plain sight.

‘Of course not,’ Soren said. ‘Do you think I’d have ended up in the castle dungeon if I knew what was going on?’

‘A fair point,’ Giura said. ‘Speaking of which, how did you get out of the dungeon?’

Soren said nothing.

Giura smiled. ‘All right. It doesn’t matter anyway. What does matter is why you met with a man named Kastor. What do you have to say about that?’

Soren kept his mouth shut. The fewer people who knew that he had brought a box of diamonds worth a king’s ransom into the city, the better, and so far it didn’t look like this man knew about them.

Giura scratched his beard. ‘Why don’t we try it this way then. As I see it, and you can correct me if I’m wrong, there are two reasons for you to pay a visit to Kastor. The first is that you are spying on him for the Duke.’ He paused and looked at Soren intently, but Soren remained impassive. ‘The second is that you were hoping to join him in his plot, but that something happened and the two of you fell out over it. I understand you saw some action in the east. I recall Kastor was the general in command of that campaign. Old friends, are you?’

Soren continued to hold his tongue.

Giura sighed. ‘I’ll continue then. Both options would explain why five of his men were waiting for you outside your inn the other night.’

Soren balked, but did his best not to show it. How long had this man been watching him? Were his paranoid concerns of the Intelligenciers waiting for him on the docks closer to reality than he thought?

‘To my mind, neither option seems more likely than the other,’ Giura said. ‘Now, would you care to indicate which of those scenarios
is
correct?’

‘Why should I trust you?’ Soren said.

‘Two reasons. The fact that you are still alive and that you are not locked up in the bowels of the Grey Tower. Bear in mind that I could just as easily have had you arrested and thrown in a dungeon as come and talk to you as I have, risking my own life in the process.’

He was right. There were easier ways for an Intelligencier to have someone dealt with. He wanted something—that much was for certain—but there had still been no mention of diamonds.

‘It’s a start,’ Soren said, ‘but not enough to get me to run off at the mouth.’

‘Well, judging by your reaction when I threatened to report you to the Duke’s authorities I think my second scenario is the most likely. I’d almost say I’m certain of it. I think that you got out of the dungeon and fled the city, but now, for whichever of the many reasons you have to choose from, you’ve come back to kill your old lord and master, the Duke.’

Soren counted himself lucky that he had never personally dealt with an Intelligencier before. Deceit and secrets were their business, and until he had a clearer idea of what this man wanted he could not reveal too much.

‘If you think that, why haven’t you turned me in?’

‘Because, Banneret, I think our aims coincide. And I think that I’m in a unique position to help you. After your little demonstration the other night, I think you’re equally well suited to help me.’

This piqued Soren’s interest. Up until that point he had expected their conversation to end with a clash of steel. Subterfuge aside, he had difficulty thinking the Intelligencier was doing anything other than trying to lure him into revealing something—probably the location of the diamonds—but their conversation was taking them no closer to that subject. The Intelligencier had admitted seeing Soren in action, so he knew what he could do. Soren had thought it was one of the reasons Giura had brought him to a crowded coffee house, hoping that he would be reluctant to draw his blade with so many innocent bystanders around.