undying legion 01 - unbound man (6 page)

“No. I thought the writing might tell you.”

“Perhaps it will. I’ll see what I can translate tomorrow.” He wrapped it again and tucked it into a pocket. “And I’ll ask around, see how much people are willing to offer for it.”

“Yeah, well, try to avoid the kind of people who’d rather kill you for it than pay you.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” he said. She tilted her head, studying his expression as though searching for something, making him feel like he needed to say more. “What did they look like, anyway?”

Her mouth twisted in a half-smile and she shook her head. “I don’t know. Mercenaries of some sort, perhaps. They didn’t wear big insignias on their backs, if that’s what you mean, or have loud conversations about their employer.”

Nodding, Arandras took a mouthful of stew and couscous; but before he could swallow, a new voice interposed.

“Couldn’t wait, huh?”

Mara laughed, and Arandras looked up to see Druce hovering beside the table, Jensine a few steps behind. “Move over,” Druce said, flapping his thin hands and collapsing into the booth with a sigh. “First things first,” he said. “Who’s sold anything?”

Good to see you, too.
Arandras set down his fork. “One necklace of red porphyry disks for three sculundi, and two candlesticks of enamel and gold for one and a half luri apiece,” he said. “The last of the tower haul. Comes to four sculundi and six scudi each.” He produced three bundles of coin, each containing four silver lengths and six silver bits, and pushed them to the corners of the table.

“Ha,” Jensine said, sliding in beside Mara and collecting her coin. “Hear that, everyone? One and a half apiece.”

“Yes, yes, well spotted. I’m sure I said that at the time.” Druce pulled open his bundle and immediately sought to hail a barmaid. “Gods, I’m parched.”

The tip had come from the low market herbalist, who claimed to have seen the ruins of a Valdori navigation tower after venturing off the road near Lagen Cove in search of a particular weed. Arandras had been immediately sceptical — the coastal ruins in this part of Kal Arna had largely been ransacked centuries ago, their stones torn down and reused — but he mentioned it to Mara anyway, as he did all such rumours. She and the others had ridden out, and had indeed discovered the base of a ruined tower — not Valdori, but abandoned all the same, and old enough to suggest that whoever had once lived there was long gone. They’d found the trapdoor buried beneath the remains of the upper level, and the strongbox in the cellar beneath. Jensine had spied the shoulder-high candlesticks behind a creeping vine that had grown to cover two of the cellar walls, and somehow Mara had converted some cut vine into a saddle-sling and carried the candlesticks home.

Pickings since then had been slim. Arandras had discovered several leads that turned out to be false, and one that was outright criminal: a small Coridon-era watch-house that now served a senior Gislean cleric as a hideaway for his clandestine lover, a sometime galley cook from the Crimson Sails. On learning of the watch-house’s owner, Arandras had warned Mara and the others off, but they’d ignored his protests and looted the place anyway, waiting until the house was unoccupied and filling a wagon with its contents. Furious, Arandras had renounced his share of the proceeds, leaving the others to dispose of the contraband as best they could. Salvage was one thing, but theft was quite another, and Arandras had no intention of sullying his hands with stolen goods. Such stains, once acquired, never truly wore off.

“Anyone else?” Druce said, slouching lower in his seat. “Mara? Tell me you’ve got a buyer for that damn puzzle box.”

“It’ll sell when it sells.” Mara shot Arandras a sour look. “Of course, it’d sell a lot sooner if our man of letters here was prepared to help shop it around.”

“You steal it, you sell it.” The words came out sharper than Arandras intended, and he took a frowning mouthful of cider.

Jensine broke the silence. “Are you all right?”

“What? Yes, I’m fine. It’s nothing.”

“Arandras had the Library come knocking,” Mara said, not entirely unsympathetically. “Again.”

“So join them,” Druce said. “Problem solved.”

“I already told him that. It didn’t take.”

“Figures. Did he give you that look, like you just offered him a baby to eat?”

“Shut up now, Druce,” Jensine said pleasantly.

“Seconded,” Arandras said.

“The motion is carried,” Mara said, earning a pout from Druce. “Or does no-one want to hear about our latest acquisition?”

Jensine looked up. “You found something?”

Mara grinned and began her story again, and Arandras took the opportunity to finish his dinner.

When she was done, Arandras produced the urn and handed it around. Druce took it reluctantly, his brow furrowed. “This place used to be a temple, right? Which god are we pissing off this time?”

“One that couldn’t keep the walls from crumbling or the roof from falling in,” Mara said. “Don’t worry about it.”

“Maybe it liked trees better than stone,” Jensine muttered.

“It’s probably just another minor deity. Weeper knows the Valdori had enough of them,” Arandras said. “The urn might tell us.”

Jensine gave the urn a cursory glance and handed it back to Arandras, who re-wrapped it and put it away. “Where did you say the lead came from? Seems odd that three different parties would pick the same day to check out a centuries-old ruin in the middle of nowhere.”

“It was a page from some dead priest’s journal. Got it from Sten, I think, up on Goldsmiths Lane.” Arandras frowned. “Looked like a recent copy, as I recall — the sort of thing that might have been made forty or fifty years ago, but not hundreds. Or it could have been made last month, if someone knew what they were doing.”

Druce sat up. “What, you think it was forged?”

“It wasn’t fake,” Mara said. “The ruins were there. And the urn, too.”

“Or maybe the Quill got the urn someplace else,” Druce said. “Or it was planted there for the Quill to find.”

“What, so those others could watch them dig it up and then kill them? What’s the point?”

Arandras gestured dismissively. “It doesn’t matter.” In the old days, he and Narvi and the rest of their group would no doubt have found the conundrum irresistible. But he’d left all that behind with the Quill in Chogon, and he had no desire to go back.
Besides, I already have a riddle that needs solving. All I need from the urn is silver from its sale.

He stood. “I’ll start shopping it around tomorrow. Unless anyone feels like delaying their coin for the sake of a few dead Quill?”

Nobody did.

“Right. Until next time.”

“Arandras,” Mara said. She leaned forward. “Don’t let them get to you. All right?”

“What, the mercenaries?”

Mara rolled her eyes in mock-frustration. “The Library, of course.” Her half-smile faded. “Join them or not, whatever you like. Just remember what they do if you let them in.”

The same thing the Quill did. The same thing they all do, sooner or later.
He nodded, and felt rather than saw the affirmation of the others: Mara, as hard and as sharp as the blades she carried; Druce, who’d have looted the strongboxes of every temple in the city by now if he wasn’t so damn superstitious; and Jensine, who’d be happy simply to sit back on a green hill somewhere, a gaggle of children at her feet, and weave air and sorcery into cloud-puppets.
It’s the only damn thing the four of us have in common. But it’s enough.

Druce’s belch broke the moment. “Off you go, then,” he said, waving his near-empty mug. “Send another my way, would you?”

“Best not,” Arandras said. “The Gisleans say that the All-God forbids it, you know.”

“Really?” Druce peered up at him cautiously. “What does he forbid, exactly?”

“Pickles.”

He could still hear Mara’s laughter as he emerged from the bar into the mild night air.

•

Clade Alsere stood motionless in the middle of his study, eyes open but unfocused, his breathing slow and steady. The slow toll of bells from the nearby Kefiran temple joined with other, more distant peals to mark the hour, but Clade ignored them all. Insensible to the vista of roofs and towers washed clean by the mid-morning sun, heedless of the rolling clamour of traffic beneath his window, Clade extended his awareness outward, groping past the limits imposed by physical senses and on to the very edge of his perception, searching for any sign of the familiar, hated presence.

The god was nowhere to be found.

Satisfied, Clade regathered the strands of his awareness. The room around him snapped into focus, bringing with it a sudden rush of sensation: the noise of lumbering wagons and shouting hawkers from the thoroughfare outside, the cool whisper of air against his face and neck, the scent of old paper and new timber. Four upholstered armchairs faced each other around a low wooden table, the arrangement filling the entire front half of the room. Behind him stood his desk, the polished eucalypt surface scarcely visible beneath weighted stacks of paper. Crowded shelves lined the walls, save for the space near the inner door where he’d affixed a series of sketches showing some of the sights of Anstice: the powder mill, Merchants’ Bridge, and the winged leopard that crouched above the entrance to the city chambers. The study was light, airy and spacious; a fitting home for the Overseer of Oculus operations in Anstice.

He would miss this suite, when the time came. He had lived here for almost two years now, longer than anywhere since Zeanes. Despite his eagerness to be gone, he’d developed an unexpected affinity to the place, as though at some point the walls had surrendered their indifference and become fellow conspirators in his long, lonely struggle to find a way out, away from the Oculus, away from the god. They had become his confidantes, the only witnesses to his failures and frustrations and slow, painstaking progress; the only counsellors to whom he dared speak his mind, and then only in whispers.

A light rap on the door disrupted his thoughts. Garrett, arriving almost on time.

A bad sign.

Clade seated himself behind his desk, the window at his back. A slender steel pen rested beside an inkwell in a graceful lacquered stand, half hidden by the piles of paper. Beside it, a marble horse-head bookend gazed out from atop a stack as though surveying the room. Clade pushed the stack aside, clearing a space where he could rest his hands.

“Come,” he said.

The door opened with the hesitant swing of a reluctant messenger. Garrett sidled into the room, blinking at Clade through floppy, straw-coloured hair, the swagger that usually animated his stride conspicuously absent. His hands were empty.

“I don’t have the urn,” Garrett said, his tone somewhere between apology and defiance. “They lost it.”

A hollow opened in the pit of Clade’s stomach. He responded instantly, walling off the feeling of despair, denying it access to the rest of him.
Control. Above all, control.
“Tell me what happened.”

Garrett cleared his throat and fixed his gaze on the papers on Clade’s desk. “Your estimate of the location was correct,” he said. “The Quill showed up just like you said they would.”

I was right.
Satisfaction bloomed, weaker than his frustrated disappointment, but recognisable nonetheless. He confined it as he had the hollow in his stomach.

“The Quill led Terrel and his men straight to the site,” Garrett continued. “A few hours later they had something out of the ground. Terrel was some distance away, but he’s pretty sure it was the urn.”

Clade grimaced.
You think I want to know his name? Fool.
But it couldn’t be unheard now. He sighed, smoothed his expression. “Go on.”

Garrett moistened his lips. “The Quill had a firebinder with them. Terrel waited for night, but the moon was full and the Quill set a watch. They trailed them the next day, but not well enough. Somehow the Quill realised they were being followed. In the end, Terrel had to give up on surprise.”

“And?”

“He won, of course. But the Quill killed two of his men, and wounded a third badly enough that he died the next night.”

“And the urn?”

Garrett swallowed. “They couldn’t find it. They searched the Quill, but none of them had it. It just… wasn’t there.”

Clade fixed his adjunct with a cold stare. The young man was generally adept at hiding anything he considered weakness, but his reluctance to meet Clade’s eyes betrayed his level of discomfort. Garrett hated to admit failure, Clade knew.
Almost as much as I hate to hear it.

“You are a member of the Oculus,” Clade said. “How are you going to repair this?”

“I’ve already told Terrel to go back,” Garrett said, the words tumbling over each other in his eagerness to please — or was it simply eagerness to move on? “His job was to retrieve the urn. He doesn’t get paid until he does that.”

“Good,” Clade said. His stomach no longer felt hollow. It was hard, now; a tight, heavy ball. He adjusted his barriers to compensate. “Remember that it’s not just Terrel’s job to retrieve the urn. It’s yours.”

Garrett nodded, though Clade thought he caught an edge of resentment in the gesture. “As you say.”

“Pursue all avenues. Don’t rely on Terrel to rescue the situation. Go out there yourself if you have to. Just find it.”

“So why all this pissing about with journals and Quill and mercenaries?” Garrett burst out. “Why not just send one of our own sorcerers and be done with it?”

Anger flared. He dropped fences around it, corralled it, placed it alongside the other captured emotions.

“There is more at play than you realise,” Clade said. “Suffice it to say that it would displease the Council if this operation were to become more widely known.” That was true enough. They’d be more than displeased to hear that it was happening at all. “Be assured that the Council notices and values both your discretion and your effectiveness.” Clade watched his adjunct absorb the meaning of the words.
That’s right. Keep your mouth shut and get the job done.

“Fine,” Garrett muttered, then caught himself. “As you say. Do you have any other instructions?”