Valkwitch (The Valkwitch Saga Book 1) (22 page)

“Mmm. An amber teardrop. It’s the highest of high
fashion and one of many prizes from her husband’s collection. We’re guarding
that piece as much as the woman wearing it.”

“Is bounty hunting not paying you well enough
that you have to lower yourselves to bodyguard jobs?”

Kexal gave Tyrissa a sly smile over his shoulder.
“Who says we ain’t hunting right now?”

Tyrissa instinctively tightened her grip on her
staff. “What do you mean?” she whispered. “Could something happen tonight?”

“Nah,” Kexal said after a noticeable pause, his
face fixed on the crowd. “There’s too much security. Figure there’s a quarter
of the Talons here, plus all the personal guards and the host’s security corp.
Nothin’ should happen.” His fingers drumming against the pommel of his sword
betrayed his casual dismissal of the idea.

“Are you trying to convince me or yourself,
Kexal?”

“Don’t worry about it, kid. Like I said, too much
security here, and I doubt anyone would be after your little Felarin bird. I ought
to relieve Garth for a spell. You take care, you hear?”

“Always.”

The party pivoted after two hours that felt like
ten. Select guests unhurriedly drifted in pairs and groups from the ballroom
into the atrium. The atrium’s the rear wall was a grand half-dome of tessellated
hexagonal glass panels. The room had been recast as a theater and a temporary
stage had been constructed below the glass wall, complete with a drawn curtain hanging
from the suspended walkways above that connected the third story of the
guildhall. Guards paced along the vine-draped walkways, the tops of their heads
bobbing in and out of sight above the railings. Vines and carefully trimmed
plants curled throughout the room and despite all the work done to dress it up,
the atrium still felt damp and retained a pleasant, earthy smell.

Trees in too-small planters lined the walls,
where the associated guards and retainers of the audience took their posts,
truly blending into the scenery. Tyrissa figured that about a third of her
fellow bodyguards were members of the Talons, that guild’s recent prestige
earning them a greater share of the contracts tonight.

An arc of round tables filled the center of the
room. Alvedo, Jesca, and Nina took their places at one of the tables just to
the left of the middle. The tables were set with delicate glassware and
porcelain, and lined with silky cloths that rippled in the gusts coming in from
the open atrium doors behind the stage.

The play was Masks of Love, a Felarin story.
Tyrissa knew of the tale. It was far from a favorite, the story of ill-fated
lovers on a long journey through a land where no one is seen in public without
some sort of white mask. The wait staff assigned to this room were dressed the
part, wearing white instead of the host’s aquatic colors, and donning white
masks. At first, Tyrissa had to fight down the urge to simply watch the play,
but soon found her efforts aided by the dubious liberties taken with the script.
Traditionally the story was told by a bard, not by a cast of eight. It was
easier to ignore the play when she had a refrain of ‘
That’s not how it goes
’
repeating in her head. The play was a tale best left to the mind’s eye or a
bard’s voice.

When the story entered the lover’s river journey,
mist arose from corners of the stage, eventually drifting into the audience to
coalesce across the floor. That was an elchemical effect, like the night lamps
on the streets, and chandeliers and false torches that lined the walls.

Tyrissa glanced up to the walkways but was unable
to see the guards on their patrols among the hanging vines.
That’s odd. It’s
not that dark in here.
She leaned in place, searching the walkways and
listening for the soft sounds of boots on metal above the players on stage.
Nothing.

She was being paranoid, letting the worries of
her new job fill her head. Looking around the room, she could swear that there
were more servants around the edges since the play’s beginning. A few wore no
mask to match the performers on stage and they carried no trays or pitchers and
stood idle. She tried counting them in the darkened room. Five. No, six. No,
eight. No, more than that. All spaced evenly at the edges of the room, all
specifically
not
watching the play or looking for plates in need of
clearing or drinks in need of refilling. They didn’t watch the crowd but looked
at each other, and counted the guards with hard eyes.

Tyrissa breathed deep to bellow a warning, but
hesitated. If she were wrong…

A second opinion.
She eased one end of her
staff through the fronds of the potted tree to nudge the shoulder of the Talon
on her left.

“What—”

Leaning around the plant, Tyrissa pointed up and
whispered, “No guards above us, and a lot of extra help.”

His eyes narrowed and saw what she meant. As one
hand went to the hilt of his sword, one of the masked servants glided up and
caught the Talon’s hand. Before Tyrissa could react, a dagger flashed out
between the two men and landed with a sickening, wet punch to the gut. The
Talon managed to shout out a wordless warning as he slumped back against the
wall.

With a gasp, Tyrissa swung out and smashed a
metal band on her staff against the attacker’s face, splintering the mask and
sending him to the ground with his prey.

She whirled back toward the tables just in time
to see clusters of white vials fly into the air and fall across the room,
shattering in a rapid series of fractured chimes. Clouds of acrid smoke burst
out from the tabletops and floors where they fell. Elchemical smoke screens,
just like what the play used for fog but now an obscuring wall rather than a
pleasant mist.

Through the thickening fog, she saw Jesca pull
Olivianna under the table, their client’s shriek shrill enough to cut through
the din of panic. Tyrissa charged into the eye-stinging smoke, dodging around
the indistinct shapes of attendees fleeing in random directions. All around she
could hear the clash of blades, but only the deadly exchange of one-two,
perhaps three before the sickening sound of a blow striking true followed by a
mortal cry.

Tyrissa slid to her knees at the central table,
pushing aside fallen chairs. Olivianna sat hugging knees to chest, wide eyed
but calm. Nina was there as well, if considerably less composed. Jesca crouched
close with a pair of knives out, a focused scowl on her face. The other members
of their table must have fled blindly into the swirling smoke.

“How many?” Jesca asked.

“At least twelve, maybe more,” Tyrissa guessed.
“Dressed like waiters.”

“I don’t think they’re after us. Otherwise I’d
have more to do. Routes out?”

Tyrissa peered over the tabletop. The smoke was slowly
thinning and she could spot a handful of silhouettes between nearby tables, but
could not see the outer walls of the room. A black shape descended from the
walkway above, cloak trailing behind like a shadow, and crashed atop the
central table where Mrs. Guldres still sat, alone and overwhelmed by what
unfolded around her. Then, something tugged at her mind as the smoke began to
swirl about the center of the room in a strangely controlled slow cyclone. It
was the same sensation as Hali, as the fire juggler in the Harvest market. Pact
magick. The feeling emanated from the cloaked figure crouching atop the
adjacent table in front of the garish Mrs. Guldres. He held the large yellow
gem from her necklace in one hand, a long knife in the other. Pulling on the
necklace, he brought her face close to his, before cutting the chain to let her
fall back into her chair.

“Let this be a personal warning,” he said to her,
voice loud enough in the chaos for Tyrissa to catch his words. “Your husband
knows what I want.”

A shadow emerged from the fog of the attack,
Kexal rushing toward the two with sword raised. The Pactbound leapt aside and rolled
through the air as the fatal swing fell, drifting away as if he were a puff of
cottonseed caught on an updraft. Kexal’s sword hit only the table, the crash of
steel on wood echoed by the Pactbound landing directly atop the table Tyrissa
crouched behind. She felt her stomach tighten, but the sensation was
reassuring, almost empowering. The Pactbound turned to her, glaring, the face
beneath the cowl clear.

Tyrissa recognized the voice, the cloak, the
face. He was a specter from the past, one of Tsellien companions that visited
Edgewatch and died with her in that cursed temple. The one with the map, though
his name eluded her.

Stand. Fight.

She didn’t get the chance. The Pactbound glanced
back at Kexal, where the Jalarni stood his ground in front of Mrs. Guldres and
stared down his opponent with a knowing glare. The cloaked man sheathed his
knife and a fierce, source-less wind blasted around the table, pushing the
smoke to the outer edges of the room and scattering silverware and plates.
Tyrissa could only watch as he leapt upward, cloak billowing in the impossible
winds. He cleared the twenty feet to the raised walkways above, landing
gracefully before running to a shadowed doorway in the heights of the hall. A
lingering, weighty feeling in her gut remained after he was gone, a trace of magick.

“Ty,” Jesca snapped from below the table.

“Come out, it’s already over.”

The smoke was fading now, the attack ending as
quick as it begun. The attackers had melted away through the atrium’s numerous
exits, lost among the fleeing crowds. Only their handiwork and a few ‘servant’
casualties remained behind. A number of hired guards lay dead or wounded and
splashes of blood decorated the walls and planters of the atrium. The once
finely dressed crowd of attendees stood disheveled and distraught in scattered
small groups, many already leaving with their guards and retainers. The woman
in the garish orange and yellow dress still sat in her assigned chair, like the
eye of the storm. Kexal and Garth stood over her, trying to rouse the woman
from her stunned state.

Jesca ducked out from under the table and Olivianna
followed. Nina emerged last and hurried away without a word, looking mortified
and still half-way panicked. Their client brushed herself down, smoothing the
wrinkles in her dress and readjusting her hair. With the exception of a dark
wine stain across her chest, she was downright presentable. Tyrissa considered
that a job well done.

Their hosts tried to create a semblance of order,
sending for medics and tending to the wounded while asking anyone well enough
to leave to do so. Tyrissa kept looking up to the suspended vine-covered
walkways, hoping in vain to catch another glimpse of the Pactbound. More than
anything she felt like she should have done more.

“I wonder,” Olivianna said once she was suitably
in order, “Though the party was ruined, it was notable. Does that make it the
right one to be seen at?” She managed to keep a calm face, though pointedly
looked away from any of the carnage.

“I find your priorities baffling,” Tyrissa said.

“Well, I wouldn’t expect
you
to
understand.”

“That’s a real strange way of saying thanks for
keeping me safe.”

Olivianna’s return glare could have melted glass.
“How dare you—”

“Only Talons were attacked,” Jesca said,
thankfully changing the subject.

She was right. Every corpse wore the gold and
black insignia of The Striking Talons guild. Many still had their weapons
sheathed. They never had a chance. The surviving members of the guild hustled
their employers out, but left lingering gazes on their fallen comrades, faces
worried. This wasn’t an assassination or kidnapping attempt. This was revenge.

“Come on,” Jesca said, “Let’s get Miss Alvedo
home.”

The university’s library had rapidly become
Tyrissa’s second home. Whenever she found herself with a few spare hours she
would inevitably end up browsing the stacks and shelves. The scholars and
students that frequented the library had started to recognize her and returned
her cheerful greetings. Today, however, she had an objective. She had
procrastinated long enough and it was time to follow up on her actual reason
for being in the city. Liran’s tip of the Stone Shaper that the elusive Pact
Witch had ‘cured’ was more than a rumor, it had become a brief news sensation
in the days after the
North Wind
left for Morgale. Khalanheim’s dueling
daily newspapers had run with the story for a few days, and the library kept
archival copies of both papers for posterity. The library staff had been
surprised that she wanted to see the news archives, but gave her directions all
the same and, worryingly, a lantern.

Tyrissa stood before a door in a back corner of
the library where the books populating the shelves looked exceptionally lonely
and underutilized. The door must have been a hold-over from the building’s
fortress past. The thick panel of worn oak barely fit in the stone framework
and the base of the doorway wasn’t flush with the library floor. ‘Basement
Archives’ was stenciled in white paint at eye level. The rust-pitted handle
seemed to be decorative since it would not turn when Tyrissa tried it. The door
resisted Tyrissa’s first attempt to push it open, but surrendered to a
well-placed hip check, its hinges squealing in protest.

Beyond lay a stairway of steep steps that curved
down into darkness like the throat of a great wurm of stone. An exhalation of cool
air flowed up from below. Tyrissa sparked the lantern alight and made her way
down. The stairwell’s utilitarian masonry spoke to the building’s martial past,
with walls of plain gray bricks that met in an arch above her head. Tyrissa let
her free hand run along the walls for balance as she descended the spiral for
what felt like many floors. The bottom of the stairs spilled out into a long
hallway that ran off to the left and right, the passageway broad enough for a
pair of armored men to walk abreast. The lantern’s glow highlighted a number of
doorways in either direction before fading into the darkness. Directly ahead
was another old oaken door labeled ‘News Archives’ in the same white paint as
above though the lettering was not as neat and somehow disdainful.

The door opened with all the resistance of its
twin above. Within was a long, narrow storeroom, the walls lined with shelves
that reached to the ceiling. Each shelf was ten levels tall, six feet long, and
was prominently labeled with a ten year range. Many of the shelves in the rear
of the storeroom stood empty for future use. A layer of dust clung to every
surface and cobwebs decorated the ceiling, the dangling threads stained a
spectral and pallid yellow by her lantern.

Tyrissa paced the length of the occupied shelves
to gain her bearings. The years were in the New Khalan Calendar, a reckoning
that began in the year after the Rift’s formation and denoted as ‘AR’. The
earliest date on the shelves was 192 AR, though many gaps were present in the shelves
until the 210s. Tyrissa found the least dusty shelf that corresponded to the
current decade of 251-260 AR, where the bottom three levels were empty. She set
the lantern down and opened all of the vents to create four wedges of golden
light on the floor.

She thumbed through the 257 shelf until she found
the prints for Emeraldbloom, the sixth month. That was when the
North Wind
caravan left Khalanheim. The archival versions of the newspapers were printed
on oversized pieces of thick card stock, twice as large the cheap paper
editions sold on the streets and with none of the cheap ink that rubbed off
onto your fingers. Tyrissa pulled out a double fistful, around ten days’ worth
of the two papers. Their content seemed barren when stripped of advertisements
that adorned the pages of the commercial versions she’d seen hawked from the
little, competing news carts or drifting through the streets, discarded.

She looked about for a place to sit, but such
comforts were absent. Aside from shelves the only other resident of the
storeroom was a wooden stepladder of questionable sturdiness. Tyrissa settled
down cross-legged on the floor and rotated the lantern to angle a wedge of
light across the stack of newspapers. As she flipped through the record of Emeraldbloom
257, it became clear that Khalan news largely consisted glorified gossip over
the ins and outs of the city’s elite, the soul crushing minutia of financial
stories and guild politics, and a trickle of news from further afield, mostly
from Felarin or Rhonia. Tyrissa had her fill of the first in the past two weeks
of standing watch over Olivianna Alvedo’s social life. Of the two daily papers,
The Times of Khalanheim
seemed more concerned with the financials and
The
Daily Coin
with gossip.

The story Tyrissa sought started to emerge on the
twenty-fifth of Emeraldbloom. ‘
Shaper Guild Schism?’
asked one
Times
headline,
the accompanying article talking in vague terms of a dispute within the
Pactbound group and linking it to the unexpected halting of work on a new
Khalan Southwest guildhall in the city of Kelnburg on the Upper Rilder River.
By the twenty-seventh the Shapers had closed ranks, retreating to their assumed
headquarters in the caverns beneath the city and leaving numerous unfinished
jobs across the Khalan Federation.
The Coin
picked up the story at that
point, applying a speculative interpretation of reality and its wealth of
unnamed ‘contacts’ to expand the drama. From there, the timeline of events was
a jumbled mess and no better that getting the story from the rumor mill taverns
of Dockside or Crossing. The Shapers were collapsing. No, they were simply on
strike. No, they were at war deep underground against an army of crystalline
golems. Each newspaper ran with their own narrative, rarely agreeing on anything
but the basics. The story faded from the headlines by the thirty-first of
Emeraldbloom, rapidly falling in status from first page news to last.

Tyrissa went back to the shelf to fetch another
grip of newspapers from the following month of Opalstorm. On the second of the
month the Shapers began to return to their contracted jobs without any
explanation of their absence, and by the fourth all attention was centered on
the arrival of a large trade delegation from Rhonian Empire. The
Times d
ropped
the Shaper Schism story altogether, but there was a final article on the
subject wedged in the bottom corner of the last page of the
Coin
from
the tenth of Opalstorm. A self-described intrepid reporter sought out and found
the source of the Shaper story among the mines and smelters of Under Forge. A
Stone Shaper named Settan had chosen to set aside his Earth Pact and managed to
get it removed by the oft-rumored Pact mystic or ‘
Ghost Witch’
as the
writer called her. The Times preferred ‘
The Pact Witch’,
which was the
more common term from what little Tyrissa could find on the topic. The
interview was brief as Settan was silent on any further details, especially on
what the Stone Shapers had done in their few days of seclusion.

The smell of burnt oil hung heavy in the air when
Tyrissa stood and stretched away the hour of being hunched over newspaper
articles. She replaced the archival prints, taking care to keep them in
chronological order even though she suspected that she was the first to ever
reference them. She hummed a cheerful tune to herself all the while. Settan.
Under Forge. A name and a place to start her search for this ‘Pact Witch’ in
earnest. It would just be a matter of finding the time. After the incident at Khalan
Southwest’s autumn gala, requests for additional protection had soared even
higher than before, stretching the ranks of security guilds like the Cadre thin.
Aside from recurring jobs with Alvedo, Tyrissa spent half her days watching a
variety of merchant wives and daughters go about their (often frivolous)
business, and half her nights on long, quiet vigils at some vault or
storehouse, counting stars and checking shadows. Neither type of job had a
scrap of action.

Pure havoc on any kind of sleep schedule.
The very thought triggered a yawn.

Tyrissa lingered in the hall before ascending the
stairs back up to the library, her sense of exploration urging her to wander.
She turned left and followed the passageway, the swaying lantern light
revealing nothing but more rough gray stone. Many of the doorways where the hall
once split into other passages or rooms were blocked by walls of smaller red
bricks of more recent construction. She paused in front of one and saw that the
masonry was uneven and hasty. Most had gaps along top, the rectangular bricks
failing to cover the older arched heights. Eventually the tunnel itself ended
in an abrupt wall built of the grayish-white stones that composed the
university’s new walls and buildings. She would have to ask one of the
archivists how extensive the remaining tunnels were. Or explore it herself,
permission or no.

Her lantern flickered, running low on oil.
Outside, daylight would be burning away just as quickly and she had another
appointment to keep today. Tyrissa hurried back down the tunnel to the winding
stairs, making plans to follow her new lead as soon as possible.

The owner of the leatherworking shop was just
about to lock up for the evening, in the midst of pulling down a metal grating
across the window of his shop, when Tyrissa rushed up blurting out apologies
and clutching the slip of paper with her order details. She had spent longer
than expected in the library and lost time weaving through the press of
humanity that clogged the major streets at the end of the workday. The man had
a face as toughened as his products that could have deflected a sword, to say
nothing of her pleas, but he simply nodded and pushed the grating back up.

“Wait here,” he said before disappearing into his
shop. He emerged a few minutes later with Tyrissa’s order, a leather harness
built of deep brown straps. One length of leather ran down the back and had the
strip of magnetized blocks securely pinned to it. The base had a metal buckle
like a belt for adjusting the fit. The buckle came too close to the magnets and
jumped up, sticking to the dull gray strip.

After accepting the harness with set of three
rapid ‘thank you’, Tyrissa threw it on over her shirt, shrugging and tugging it
into place. The magnets were neatly centered on her back, the strap housing
them following her spine before splitting in two to loop over her shoulders and
descend down her sides. The fit was a little off due to it being on top of her
clothes, but otherwise was exactly what she imagined. She paid the balance left
on the bill, added a gilder for being a bother at closing time, and ran home
like a child racing towards a new toy. It wasn’t far from the truth.

Tyrissa was a blur at home, snagging a piece of
day old bread and stripping down to a white linen shirt and loose trousers.
Then she was back out in the narrow street, the evening dim in the growing
twilight, her staff in hand. The harness fit much better over a thin
undershirt. Slowly, Tyrissa maneuvered the steeloak staff behind her back,
finding the magnetized plate with the staff’s central metal band. The two came
together with a satisfying metallic snap. She could see one end of the staff
above her head, clearing by a good foot. Below, the other end hovered over the
ground between her feet. She took a few experimental steps, and found it was
quite manageable, if awkward at first, like wearing a long thin backpack.

In a smooth motion she reached up, grasped the
staff, and pulled it forward. Anchored by her body, the harness held fast and
the staff snapped free, rolling around her shoulder to be caught by her other
hand.

Oh yes.

Tyrissa spent the next hour practicing many
different ways of drawing and replacing her staff: over either shoulder, her
back near a wall, horizontally around her stomach. Much of the time was spent
fumbling and tripping over her limbs like she never held the weapon before.
Most draws required considerable space, but soon she was whipping the steeloak
around with all the force of a hammer blow. As full dark descended, her body
was sweat-soaked while her mind buzzed with possibilities and situations. She
slept well that night, her worries and objectives temporarily forgotten.