The Warlord's Legacy (43 page)

“I’
VE FOUND SOMETHING
.”

Kaleb’s voice in the hallway was enough to conjure Jassion and Mellorin from their own offices. They appeared in twin swirls of parchment, and Kaleb could only shake his head at the detritus they were
leaving behind. “It’s a good thing we weren’t trying to be subtle or anything,” he told them. “It looks like you’ve been shearing parchment sheep in there.”

Mellorin offered a grin that was at least
slightly
embarrassed, but Jassion—as usual—cared little for Kaleb’s concerns. “You’ve found why Rebaine was interested in these people?”

“I’ve found an
answer,
” the sorcerer said, so smugly that even his words seemed to turn up their noses in disdain. He held out a creased sheaf of parchments he’d found (with the aid of a few judicious spells) in the office files. “It appears,” Kaleb told them, “that the late Guildmistress had commissioned a private investigation of her own. You might like to know what she found.” The baron and the warlord’s daughter leaned in, scanning the cramped writing, and when they spoke once more, they spoke as one.

“Son of a bitch!”

H
ALF AN HOUR LATER, THEY STOOD
gathered in the living room of a modest house on Kevrireun’s south end. What had once been a low table was now so much kindling, books and scrolls were scattered about the chamber, and one Embran Laphert—a bald, broad-shouldered fellow who currently led the Weavers’ Guild, despite looking like the most unlikely weaver imaginable—hung from the wall, held aloft by Kaleb’s magics. He was clad only in a nightshirt, and couldn’t cease babbling long enough to form coherent speech.

Neither Jassion nor Mellorin currently had a single glance to spare him. They were too busy marveling at what lay beyond the open door to an inner room.

“You have
got
to be joking,” Jassion finally said.

A small workbench held a large battle-axe with several simplistic but skillful engravings across the blade. Beside it slouched a fat wineskin that smelled, not of wine at all, but of lantern oil.

And behind that, on a large wooden rack, stood a suit of armor, modeled after the most ornate of knightly plate. It had been coated in a
black lacquer, the breastplate and spaulders adorned with a few shafts of what appeared, up close, to be iron painted ivory white. To the visor of the helm was bolted the face and jawbone of a human skull.

“It’s actually pretty clever,” Kaleb said, “in a ‘limited intelligence’ sort of way.” He offered Laphert a friendly smile. “I’m curious: When you were drummed out of the Blacksmiths’ Guild, wouldn’t it have made more sense, given your talents, to become a jeweler or coppersmith? Weaving seems like a stretch.”

It was hard to interpret an answer, given the fellow’s blubbering and sobbing, but he
seemed
to be telling them that, in a city as small as Kevrireun, those Guilds fell under the same general oversight as the blacksmiths’ did.

The sorcerer nodded. “So when you learned of the report someone had made to the Guildmistress, about you embezzling from your former Guilds, you figured you could protect yourself and take over the local branch of the Guild in one stroke. And you had a perfect candidate to take the blame.”

Not actually all that dissimilar
, he mused inwardly,
to some other scheme I could mention
.

“Let’s go,” Jassion muttered, irritable but subdued. “We’ve wasted our time.”

“I believe,” Kaleb told him with a jaunty grin, “that it’s actually
you
who have wasted our time.”

Jassion swept through the door, slamming it behind him.

“Not,” Kaleb continued, his grin faltering as he turned toward his other companion, “that he was the only one.” Mellorin blushed and stared at her feet, her hair falling over her face in a flimsy curtain. She mouthed what might have been
I’m sorry
, though he couldn’t see well enough to be certain, and went after her fuming uncle—perhaps hoping to calm him down before he broke someone, perhaps fleeing from Kaleb’s disappointment.

As soon as she was gone, all trace of humor or hurt—all trace of
humanity
—dropped from Kaleb’s features. Muttering a spell, he moved with supernatural speed, gathering pieces of the false armor and strapping them to the man who struggled and flopped against the wall.
Only when the entire ensemble was complete did Kaleb step away. He cast a second enchantment, ensuring that none of the sounds—or screams—to follow would penetrate the house’s walls. And then a final spell, the price of irritating a vengeful sorcerer.

Kaleb headed back toward the hostel in which they’d acquired rooms, leaving the armor—and the man trapped and silently shrieking within—to melt slowly into a puddle of slag.

“
W
EST
.
”

Kaleb rolled his eyes so hard he could practically
see
the voice inside his head. “Of
course
he’s going west,” he whispered as he leaned out the window of the austere little room. “You said he was in Emdimir. Unless he’s decided to liberate Rahariem on his own—or invade Cephira itself—there’s nowhere to go
but
west.”

Nenavar’s sigh came clear through the psychic link. “
Don’t be tiresome, Kaleb. It’s all our Cephiran friends have reported to me—and anyway, it’s a start. Get moving, and I’ll give you more when I
have
more.
”

Kaleb left the room, gathering his possessions with a single swoop of his arm. A second wave of his hand unlatched the door to the chamber beside his, and he slipped inside. For a moment he stood, watching the slumbering figure, scarcely visible in the light of a single candle.

Mellorin moaned softly in her sleep and then, perhaps feeling his attention upon her, sat bolt upright on the lumpy mattress. She gasped, pulling the sheets to her chin—an amusing reaction, thought Kaleb, since her slip was more modest than some formal gowns.

“I’m sorry I startled you,” he said softly.

“Kaleb, what’s wrong? Is …” She glanced through the narrow gap in the shutters. “It’s the middle of the night.”

“I know, but we have to get moving. I’ll explain when I’ve woken Jassion. You’d better get dressed.”

“A-all right.”

Nobody moved.

“Um, Kaleb?”

“Damn,” he said, weighting the word with as much exaggerated disappointment as he could manage. She smiled, despite herself, and Kaleb could not help but return it—for it seemed unlikely, now, that he would ever need suffer a repeat of her earlier defiance. He turned away, moving toward the third room as Mellorin began to change.

J
ASSION HAD BEEN LESS
sanguine about being awakened in the dark and silent hours of the morning, but Kaleb’s news mollified him quickly enough.

“How?” the baron demanded as he darted around the room like an angry hummingbird, trying to dress himself for travel and gather up his belongings without so much as a second wasted in hesitation.

“The spell on Davro,” Kaleb lied. “The tug’s gotten a lot stronger.”

“I thought you said it couldn’t pinpoint him like that,” Mellorin said from the doorway.

The sorcerer shrugged. “I also said I’d never attempted to backtrack a spell like this. Maybe it fluctuates. Maybe he’s trying to use it to find Davro, or someone else. Hell, maybe he’s picked up on my tampering and he’s laying a trap.”

Jassion finally paused in his efforts. “And if so?”

“Then we move carefully. It’s still taking us where we want to go.

“Keep in mind,” he continued as Jassion resumed his efforts, “that I’m not claiming to know
precisely
where he is. I think I can get us close enough to where my other divinations—
our
others,” he corrected with a glance at Mellorin, “can pinpoint him.”
Actually, Nenavar and the Cephirans can
guide
me close enough to where the blood-magic can pinpoint him. But you don’t need to know that just yet
. “Still, we’re talking a lot of ground, and he’s not exactly staying put.” There was just enough emphasis on those last words to inspire the baron to redouble his efforts, and he stood ready to leave but a few moments later.

“We have to stop on the way out,” Kaleb told him, “and acquire blinders for the horses.”

Two jaws dropped.

“You just said we had to hurry!” Jassion protested.

“And there aren’t any leather-goods shops open at this time of night,” Mellorin added.

“Then we break in and steal them. Or leave sufficient coin to pay, if you’d prefer. But trust me, they’re necessary, and they’ll prove more than worth the time they take to acquire.”

And again, as was becoming a habit that irritated Mellorin and drove Jassion up the wall more swiftly than Kaleb’s telekinesis, the sorcerer refused to explain any further.

I
T WAS AN HOUR
, several miles, and three sets of blinders later that they finally got their answer. The road from Kevrireun wasn’t a true highway, but was sufficiently maintained that walking the horses in the dark had proved merely inconvenient, rather than dangerous. Owls and crickets called from afar, growing silent as the travelers approached, and the late night hours were just chilly enough to bring a shiver to the skin.

Not long after the lingering lights of Kevrireun had vanished behind them, Kaleb spotted a small knoll up ahead. Handing his reins to Jassion without a backward glance, he jogged ahead to the top of the rise, whispering a spell to enhance his sight. It wasn’t much of a vantage point, but it’d do for a start.

There he waited until his companions caught up. Jassion hurled the bridle back at him, and only Kaleb’s swift reflexes prevented them from lashing his face like a whip.

“Do I
look
like a servant to you?”

Mellorin snorted. “You should know better than to give Kaleb an opening like that.”

The sorcerer ignored both of them as he handed around the blinders. “Put these on,” he instructed them. “On the horses,” he added to Jassion, as though the baron could possibly have misunderstood. “You’re shortsighted enough without them.”

Once they were in place, Kaleb moved from animal to animal, adjusting the blinders to block
all
sight, rather than merely peripheral vision. “Hold the reins tight.”