I didn’t bother pointing out that if she hadn’t been here, I wouldn’t have been distracted by thoughts of Athel and Sylos and pieces of paper. Instead, I held up a placating hand and said, “Fowler, you’re right. Thank you. I owe you. More than ever. But right now, will you please just lock the inside floorboard for me? I don’t trust myself at this point.”
“You, either, huh?”
“Fowler . . .”
“All right, all right.” She took a few deep breaths to get her own hands to stop shaking. Then she knelt, cracked the door open, and reached inside to turn the small handle on the wall that locked down the loose floorboard just past the entry. Stepping on the board without locking it would get us both a face full of quick lime from the air bladder installed underneath it.
“When’s the last time you slept, anyhow?” she said as she stood up.
“A day? Two?” I said. “I don’t even remember at this point.”
“Well then,” she said, pushing open the door. “I suggest you . . . Fuck.”
Even if it had been an invitation, I doubt I would have been able to take her up on it just then. Inspiring as she could be in bed, I just didn’t have it in me at the moment. But as it turned out, I didn’t have to worry about coming up with an answer. The catch in her voice and way she froze in the doorway told me more than I needed to know.
I reached out without thinking, ready to pull her back and slam the door shut against whatever was waiting for us inside. Then I saw what she saw, and I froze as well.
There was a woman in my bedroom—a dead woman; a dead floating woman, held a foot off the floor by nothing I could see.
“We’ve got trouble,” said Fowler Jess. “Big trouble.”
Chapter Fifteen
“W
ho is she?” asked Jelem as he walked slowly around the floating corpse.
“She’s a Blade named Task,” I said from the edge of my bed. “A good one. A
very
good one.”
“So whoever did this did you a favor,” he observed.
“Lucky me.”
Jelem smiled and continued to circle the dead assassin. He was still wearing the cream-colored robe from last night, but the vest had been replaced by a long, lightweight coat of blue linen. A matching cloth was wrapped around his head. Even though I was sure he had not slept, Jelem looked fresher than half the people I had seen on the street while coming home.
I had sent for Jelem immediately—this was his specialty, not mine. Besides, it had direct bearing on the matter of Tamas and his rope: Task had an identical rope hanging from her belt.
“When can we get her down?” I asked. I wanted to see what else she had on her besides the rope—like maybe some bits of paper.
“Soon,” said Jelem. “The glimmer holding her up isn’t impossible to unravel, but it’s no simple thing, either.” He pulled out a small calfskin pouch, drew an ahrami seed from it, and slipped the seed into his mouth. Jelem sucked thoughtfully as he moved. “This is well-done,” he said after a moment, gesturing at Task’s body. “The magic’s of a higher quality than I usually see on the street. The anchors are strong, tapped directly into the Nether. That’s a lot of work just to float a corpse in the air. A simple repulsion spell on the floor would have done the same thing, but it would have faded after a few days. Done this way, the body could stay here for years.” Jelem looked at me meaningfully. I stared back blankly.
“I assume you’re making a point besides, ‘This isn’t small-time,’ ” I said, “because I figured that much out myself.”
“What I’m saying is that there is glimmer, and there is
glimmer
.”
I pinched the bridge of my nose. “This isn’t going to be good news, is it?”
“You can ask me that with a dead assassin floating in your bedroom?”
He had a point. “Let’s hear it, then.”
“How much do you know about magical theory?”
“Probably as much as you know about picking a Kettlemaker lock.”
“Indeed,” said Jelem. “I’ll keep it brief, then.
“At its most basic,” he said, “magic gets its power from what we call the Nether. Most magicians agree on this basic premise—the differences come when we start to talk about what exactly the Nether
is
. I won’t bore you with all the various theories on the nature of the Nether—”
“Oh, damn,” I said.
“Although if you insist on interrupting me, I could.” Jelem paused to take a meaningful breath. “The main point is that while the Nether is a separate thing from our reality, some of its energy manages to cross over into our world. Whether it accumulates naturally, is drawn here by other powers, or is some sort of cosmic or religious ‘gift’ isn’t really important for our current discussion.
“Most street magic, as you know it, is powered by energy that has already seeped into our world from the Nether of its own accord. This means the average Mouth doesn’t summon the energy for his spells so much as gather up a portion of what is already here and form it to his needs. Furthermore, how he collects, channels, and forms the energy ultimately decides not only what it does, but how long it lasts.”
“You make Mouths sound almost like garbage pickers,” I said.
Jelem looked down his nose at me. “I prefer to think of them as tailors, taking in raw fabric and fashioning something useful with a cut here and a stitch there.”
“Uh-huh,” I said. “So, my good ‘tailor,’ what does this have to do with Task over there?”
“Ninety-nine out of one hundred Mouths would have used a basic repulsion spell to suspend her in the air, as I said. It’s a straightforward enchantment that uses the available energy in a simple manner. Not to mention that it’s the only way most Mouths know how to power any kind of glimmer.” Jelem gestured at the dead Blade. “
This
caster, though, did something different: He opened up a small tap into the Nether and tied his spell to it. Instead of using the magical energy that has accumulated around us, he opened up a direct link to the Nether itself.”
“How hard is that to do?”
“Very.”
“Could
you
do it?”
“I’ve done it on a total of four occasions,” he said. “All back in Djan. And each of those times required days of preparation, in a controlled setting. Doing it here, in someone else’s home, on a tight schedule? No, I couldn’t. Nor would I want to.”
“But you say you can undo it,” I said.
“Yes, because whoever did this also made it so that another Mouth could unravel the glimmer.”
“On purpose?”
“Just so.”
I looked at the Blade, and a thought occurred to me—a very bad thought. “Jelem,” I said slowly, “are you trying to tell me this is
imperial
glimmer?”
“What?” said Jelem. He turned and looked at me. “By the Family, no! No. If it were, I’d be back home devising an alibi and considering the best route out of Ildrecca. This magic is very potent, but it’s still street magic. Imperial glimmer is far above this. Or at least, that’s what I hear—it’s all rumors when it comes to the empire’s magic, anyhow.”
“Oh, well, as long as it’s just ‘very potent’ then,” I said sourly.
Still, despite the magic, I felt strangely calm. It was as if I had gotten to a point where, with so many things piling up around me, one more brick didn’t matter anymore. The new assassin should have worried me; her presence in my rooms should have frightened me; and the unknown source of the magic used to deal with her should have scared me out of my wits. Instead, it all washed over and around me, leaving me untouched.
I suspected that things would look much worse once I got a good night’s sleep.
I heard hard, measured footfalls on the stairs. A moment later, Fowler Jess came stalking into the room, her every gesture a study in rage. “My people report all clear for the entire night,” she fumed. “No one saw a thing.”
“Not surprising,” said Jelem. He had taken a small brush from his coat and begun sweeping it through the air around the body. “The
yazani
who did this can likely come and go as he pleases, at least where your efforts are concerned.” Jelem paused, wet his dark thumb, and rubbed at something on Task’s corpse. “You may want to consider some glimmered defenses, Drothe,” he said. “My rates are, well, let’s not say reasonable; affordable, perhaps?”
“I can handle this just fine!” snapped Fowler. “I don’t need some cut-rate glimmer monger throwing magic all over the place—magic that’ll just end up getting in my people’s way.”
“Yes,” said Jelem as he returned to his brushing. “You’ve obviously done a superb job so far. Tell me, do I need to make an appointment to try to kill Drothe, or is it simply on a first-come, first-served basis? I can never keep Kin etiquette straight.”
I reached out and grabbed Fowler’s arm as her long knife cleared its scabbard. Fowler glared at me, yanked against my grip. I shook my head. Jelem didn’t even glance our way.
“Would your glimmer have stopped my visitor?” I asked.
Jelem sucked on his seed. “Her?” he said, pointing at the assassin. “Most likely, although I wouldn’t be surprised if she was killed somewhere else and brought here afterward. It’s far easier to veil corpses than it is live bodies. As for whoever put her here in the first place? No, I don’t think my spells would have done anything other than annoy your anonymous benefactor.”
“Like I said,” said Fowler, “we can handle this.” I let go of her arm. She put her knife away and moved over to one of the room’s two windows. With a shove, Fowler opened the shutters the rest of the way and seated herself on the sill.
“You said ‘benefactor,’ ” I said to Jelem.
He nodded, still circling Task. “What else? Believe me, if whoever did this wanted you dead, you’d be dead.”
We all grew silent after that. Jelem continued to work on the floating corpse, pausing occasionally to mutter softly to himself in singsong Djanese. Fowler sat in the window, brooding. Every now and then, I caught her making small gestures to the world outside: signaling her people and gathering reports. Doubling the guard, more likely than not.
I turned this newest question over in my head. Why kill a Blade and go to all the trouble of suspending her in my room, when a well-thrust knife and a note under my door would have accomplished the same thing? It was, I decided, more than a warning; it was a statement. Not only was someone watching over me—they had access to the kinds of power I couldn’t come close to touching. And if they had access to this kind of power—and were willing to flaunt it—what were the odds of whoever was after me having the same level of resources? The glimmered rope had been bad enough, but what if that was only small-time for them?
I looked back up at Task. Why even bother hiring Blades at all? If the person behind Tamas and Task was as potent as my benefactor, why wasn’t I dead already? And why, for that matter, was either of these people interested in
me
?
I placed my forehead in the palm of one hand and drew a seed from my pouch with the other, then stopped myself. No. Ahrami wasn’t the answer now. No matter how many I ate, they would only make me alert, not awake. My mind was a jumble of questions and information, none of it fitting together well. Tackling that mess now would be like trying to find my way out of a maze wearing a blindfold. I needed sleep. Hell, I practically ached for it.
“How much longer until you have her down?” I asked Jelem, already starting to lean back onto my bed.
“Hard to say,” said Jelem. “Not soon, anyhow.”
“I thought you said the glimmer on her was breakable.”
“And every lock is pickable, but do I stand beside you in dark hallways and shake your elbow?”
“Then where the hell am I supposed to sleep?”
“I would suggest ‘not here,’ ” said Jelem, turning back to Task’s body. “I don’t want company, and you don’t want to be here for some of the things I’ll need to do to get her down. You find things for a living—surely you can find someplace to sleep.”
Finding someplace wasn’t the problem; finding someplace
safe
, though, was another matter. Still, Jelem was right—I didn’t want to think about the kind of dreams I would have if I stayed here.
I looked over at Fowler Jess.
“Oh, hell no,” she said. “
Hell
no!”
“Jess . . . ” I began.
“You’re pulling in trouble like a crooked Rag rakes in hawks, Drothe. No way I’m letting you anywhere near my place.”
“It’s just for one night,” I said. “And besides, in a way—”
“Don’t!” she said, slipping down off the windowsill. “Don’t you
dare
tell me I owe you, or it’s my fault you don’t have a place to stay, or anything like that. Killing you would ruin my reputation, but, right now, I’d happily pay that price if you said something stupid.”
Since that was exactly what I had been going to say, I shut my mouth. “I don’t suppose you can spare anyone to watch me if I go to an inn?” I said instead.