undying legion 01 - unbound man (32 page)

“Mara,” he said. “The urn… it doesn’t really matter. You know that, right? And the golems, they don’t matter either. The only thing that matters is finding that man, and…”

Killing him.
Arandras froze, the words hanging unspoken in the air between them. But Mara’s face showed no shock, no surprise; only a strange resignation. Her hand brushed his arm.

“I know,” she said.

He flinched away from her touch, wrapping his arms tightly across his chest. “How?”

Somehow, she divined his meaning.

“We were thieves,” she said at last, and her mouth twitched as though in memory of a smile. “Just the two of us. He was good. Fast and supple, like a great cat.” She looked away, her voice going flat. “One night we hit a whoremonger. Woman as fat as an oxcart. Didn’t realise she had a pet sorcerer.” Her shoulders moved in a barely perceptible shrug. “He got caught. They kept him for weeks. Toyed with him. When they finally let him go, he was broken. Just… broken. I had to…” She broke off and angrily tossed her head. “The lawmen didn’t want to know. Why would they? We were thieves. So… it was just me.”

Arandras waited for her to go on, but she seemed to have run out of words. He swallowed. “Did you…?”

She nodded. “Both of them.”

“Did it help?”

A shrug. “It needed doing.”

She stared away at nothing, fists tight but eyes dry. Arandras rubbed his lip, not sure what to say. The waterwheels turned and turned, the gap from the missing paddle rising and falling and rising again. When at last she spoke, her voice was so soft that he had to strain to hear it over the lapping of the water.

“No,” she said. “It didn’t help. But it needed doing.”

•

“Golems,” Fas said, gazing out at the assembled Quill with an expression that put Arandras in mind of a mummer commencing a long-winded soliloquy. “Here’s what we know.”

The new workroom was half again as wide as the old room, and twice as long. Some dozen Quill were gathered at one end of the room for the briefing, Narvi and Senisha among them. From his position by the wall, Arandras could see Bannard standing behind Fas, hands fidgeting as he tried — with limited success — to give the appearance of paying attention to the other man’s words.
You and me both,
Arandras thought, fighting a yawn as Fas ran through the rudiments of known golem history.

“The Valdori created the golems to serve as soldiers. The secret of their construction remains one of the great mysteries of the Empire, but the accounts we have suggest that some form of spiritbinding was the key.” Fas paused significantly, his gaze sweeping the room, and Arandras stifled a laugh.
Weeper, but that man enjoys the sound of his own voice.

“Golems had no will of their own,” Fas continued. “They were created to be bound to the will of a master. A golem could have only one master at a time, and that master wasn’t always a sorcerer. The Valdori bound golems to military commanders, typically no more than ten or twelve golems per master. Each squad of golems thus had its own human captain who would direct its actions from a position close enough to be effective but far enough from the fray to maintain relative safety.”

Or so they thought. Fas’s summary was accurate enough as far as it went, but none of it was even remotely certain. Everything anyone knew about the golems was built on fragmentary records, cautious supposition, and outright speculation. Arandras folded his arms.
A little humility in the face of our collective ignorance wouldn’t go astray.

“What are their weaknesses?” The question came from a tall, fair-haired man whom Narvi had earlier introduced to Arandras as Ienn, a firebinder and swordsman who would likely lead the anticipated field team to retrieve the golems. Ienn had the weathered look of one who spent most of his time under the sky — a rarity among the Quill. “How did people fight them?”

“With tremendous difficulty,” Fas said. “Sorcery was the only thing that had any real effect. Even then, it was more about incapacitating the golems than destroying them. Burying them in the earth, say. Or you could go for the commanders, of course, though that had dangers of its own.”

“Like what?”

Fas turned. “Bannard?”

“Ah. Yes.” Bannard stepped forward, squinting at Ienn. “Um. You have to realise we still don’t understand how the binding worked. Golem to master, I mean. But in the accounts where a master is killed mid-battle, the golems tend to react unpredictably. Sometimes they just go dormant and refuse to be re-bound by another master, for anywhere from a few hours to several months. But sometimes it’s like their master’s last orders stay with them even after he’s dead. There are stories of the Valdori having to use their own golems to subdue others that have gone rogue after the loss of their master.”

“What about anamnil?”

“Maybe, to break the link between golem and master. It’d be unlikely to harm the golem itself.”

“Could a master relinquish his golems voluntarily?” asked someone on the other side of the room.

“We believe so,” Bannard said. “But again, we’re not sure how.”

Truth is, we know practically nothing,
Arandras thought as Bannard embarked on a discussion of the urn and what they’d learnt so far.
We assume the Emperor had his own personal coterie of golems to guarantee his position, because it’s the only power base we can think of that makes sense. But really, who knows?
Perhaps Tereisa’s killer knew more. If he really had set this whole thing up, he’d have to know where the urn led.

Maybe I’ll ask him before he dies.

A mention of his own name pulled Arandras’s attention back to Bannard. “Arandras solved it, in the end. The inscription is — well, in short, each word is a combination of Valdori and Yanisinian elements. Translated, it says, ‘Here lies the Emperor’s first legion. May its spirits rest undisturbed until the end of time.’”

“First legion?” repeated a plump woman with a stubbled red-brown scalp and a bandage covering one ear.
That must be the sorcerer who botched the unbinding. Halli.
“There’s more than one, then.”

“Maybe,” Bannard said. “Or maybe the golems are the first legion, as opposed to all the other, regular legions. Again, we don’t know.”

“Where is Arandras?” Fas said, scanning the room. “There you are. Why don’t you come up here and show these fine people the urn?”

Every head in the room turned to Arandras.
Oh, wonderful.
Swallowing his reluctance, he made his way to the front.

“Arandras Kanthesi,” Fas said, with a wave of his hand as if he had personally conjured Arandras into being. “Former Quill linguist, and the man we have to thank for bringing this puzzle to our attention.” He gave Arandras an expectant look.

With an inward grimace, Arandras reached into his pouch and held up the urn.
Seems like all I do here is show this thing off to one Quill or another. A glorified pedestal, that’s me.

“Good, good,” Fas said. “With the team expanding, we’ll need to make the urn more widely available. Arandras will supervise its use whenever he’s present, of course. At other times, we’ll find someone else to take charge of it. Narvi, perhaps —”

“No,” Arandras said.
Oh, no, you don’t, you sneaky bastard.
“The urn stays with me.”

Fas’s chuckle seemed pitched not at Arandras, but at the watching Quill. “But you see how many of us are now committed to helping you solve this riddle. Some of these people will be working late into the night, and others will start each day before the dawn. You can’t possibly be present the entire time.”

“No, I can’t,” Arandras said. “And neither can the urn.”

Fas assumed a regretful frown. “Well. We’ll discuss this later.” He gestured his dismissal to the assembled Quill. “Enough talk,” he said. “Go to work.”

The Quill dispersed, some leaving the room as others re-formed into smaller groups and began murmured conversations. Narvi caught Arandras’s eye on his way out, but the look he cast was beyond Arandras’s ability to decipher. Fas hung back, sitting on a vacated stool and busying himself with some papers.

“What in the hells was that?” Arandras said, glowering at the top of Fas’s balding head. “I told you how this was going to work. I retain custody of the urn
at all times.
No exceptions.”

“Which was fine as long as this was a three-man project,” Fas said, not looking up. “It’s grown somewhat larger than that now, wouldn’t you say?”

“Doesn’t matter. Our agreement stands.”

Fas set the papers down and stood. On his feet, he was at least a head taller than Arandras. “I’ve been very patient with you, Arandras,” Fas said, his thumb tapping apparently unconsciously against his thigh. “I took up your problem based on nothing but Narvi’s good word for you. I gave you food and lodging. I’ve tolerated your little eccentricities.” He gave a slight sigh. “The only way this works is if everyone’s prepared to do their part for the whole. You used to work for us, so I know you understood that once. But I’m starting to wonder if, somewhere along the way, you’ve forgotten it.”

More like seen through it.
There was no whole, not really; only men like Fas. Arandras took a deep breath. “I remain very happy to cooperate with your scholars and sorcerers, Damasus, just as when I arrived. But I will retain custody of the urn. At all times.”

Fas shook his large head regretfully. “You disappoint me, Arandras,” he said. “It seems Narvi misjudged you. Blinded by past friendship, I suppose.” He sighed. “Well. Despite your intransigence, we’re still prepared to honour our agreement. We are not so unprincipled as you seem to imagine. But if you’re not prepared to trust us with the urn, I imagine you can’t be very comfortable sleeping under our roof, or eating our food. Perhaps you’d like to find other lodgings for the rest of your stay in Anstice.”

“Perhaps I would,” Arandras snapped.
Honour our agreement, my arse. The Gatherer himself couldn’t peel you away from this now.

“Your friend, too, I imagine.”

“Of course.”

“Well,” Fas said again. “I wish you a productive day.” He began gathering his papers. “The Quill is not your enemy, Arandras. Not unless you make it so.”

But Arandras was neither the Quill’s enemy nor its friend. He was simply himself.
Our relationship is what you make it, Damasus. Everything else is just words.

•

Six days after the meeting of the Woodtraders Guild’s masters, Kieffe’s body remained in Phemia’s chill-chest. Eilwen had no idea what was taking Caralange’s sorcerer so long, nor which master was paying for the precious hours of chill-chest time. Ten days of continuous use was typically enough to drain the spell dry, rendering the chest inert until a Quill sorcerer could be brought in, at significant cost, to refresh the binding.
We might need two sorcerers this time. One to replenish the binding, and a second to clean the damn box of any leftover corpse bits.

There’d been a small memorial service for Kieffe the previous day. Laris had brought in a house priest from the Pantheon to perform the rites customarily reserved for cases where the body had been destroyed. Eilwen had gone along, not so much to pay her respects as to see who else might be there. Unfortunately, Laris seemed to have instructed her entire department to attend, many of whom were eager to ask Eilwen how the investigation was proceeding. The tedious rounds of small talk and polite non-answers left her with little opportunity to scan the gathering for unlikely attendees. At one point she caught a glimpse of Vorace across the room talking with Phemia and Soll, but as far as she could tell, neither Havilah nor Caralange had attended.

The image of the cannon barrel nestled in wood shavings haunted her thoughts. In her shock at the discovery of the weapons in Qulah’s warehouse, she’d failed to determine how many there were, or how many were yet to come.
Enough to make it impossible for Qulah to fulfil the order out of existing stock, even back in Tan Tahis. How many is that?
The Tahisi merchant had mentioned shot and powder as well, but had said nothing about gun carriages, leaving Eilwen to wonder if the cannons were to be fixed in place, or perhaps used to arm ships. Then again, there was probably nothing special about a gun carriage. If a Woodtrader couldn’t arrange the construction of some timber carriages this side of the Sea of Storms, they weren’t trying very hard.

The possibility of a separate transaction to procure carriages invited its own line of investigation, albeit one with a familiar problem: the difficulty of getting her hands on any of the records. Havilah’s reports, detailed as they were in many respects, simply didn’t have the kind of information she needed. But there was no way to demand the relevant records without the masters hearing about it, at which point the information she sought would likely be excised — unless someone decided it would be less trouble to simply have her removed.

She sat on the edge of her desk, her heels raising hollow thuds as they drummed against the varnished eucalyptus panel.
And then there’s the coinage.
The notion of paying in Tahisi coin for even one consignment of cannons was improbable, to say the least. It wasn’t as though the Woodtraders kept reserves of Jervian talents and Kharjik bezants and Tahisi minza for contingencies like this. Even if the Guild wanted to make the exchange, Eilwen doubted the local money-changers would be able to offer the quantities required.
In a southern port city like Spyridon or Damara, maybe. Not here.

Unless, of course, the ultimate purchaser was someone with special access to Tahisi currency — perhaps even someone who had been born in Tan Tahis. Someone like Havilah.

No, it doesn’t make any sense. Gods, none of this makes sense. What possible use could anyone in the Guild have for a warehouse full of cannons?

A series of loud knocks broke her train of thought. She grimaced, resenting the interruption. “Not now,” she called. “Come back later.”

There was a pause, then the knocking resumed, softer this time but more insistent. “Open, please,” came a muffled voice she recognised as belonging to Ufeus. “You need to hear this.”