Authors: Kelly McCullough
“That might work, but there’s also Jax to consider,
and
what happens if we leave Faran alone and vanish for hours. I don’t think it’s a good idea to have Jax show up and run into a Faran who’s maybe thinking something bad has happened to me.”
“Then, better yet, don’t go. We don’t have to meet Malthiss and Kelos at all. They have embraced the evil that destroyed Namara. They have no right to ask anything of us. You know that, right?”
“It’s not that simple, Triss. We don’t know what Kelos wants out of this whole situation and he’s far too dangerous to ignore. I’d much rather run the risks involved with dealing with him face-to-face now, than skip out on the meeting and wait for him to show up behind us somewhere later.”
Triss flicked his wings angrily. “I do not like this.”
“I don’t like it either, I’m just speaking of what is.” I shrugged. “We have two options. One, we can deal with him now.”
“When he and Malthiss have had plenty of time to get ready for us,” interjected Triss.
I laughed. “Like they need it. Or, are you seriously suggesting they wouldn’t be able to take us without a lot of set up?”
Triss turned his head away. “No. Even at our very best we could not have beaten them in a straight fight, and we have fallen a long way since then.”
“Which brings us back to my original point. Now. Or later, after we’ve pissed him off. Those are the choices.”
Triss sighed and slid closer, reaching up to put his head in my lap. “I guess we might as well get it over with.”
I scratched behind his ears, in the place where his scales were thinnest. “Then we have to tell Faran. Speaking of which . . . Why don’t you come in off the roof?”
There was a snort from above, and Faran’s face suddenly appeared upside down at the top of the window. “How’d you know I was here? I swear I didn’t make any noise.”
“No, you didn’t. But neither did you go to the bathhouse. I made sure to be on the roof on that side of the building when you should have been crossing the street. That meant you were either following Jax, or hanging around here for some reason. Once I knew that, I just had to watch the right shadows to see if any of them were a touch too dark.”
Faran reached down and caught the lintel of the window, flipping herself around to land neatly on the ledge. “I could have been sneaking off to do something entirely different. Maybe meeting up with some of
my
old spying contacts.”
“Possible, yes, but given the circumstances, not likely.”
“So the whole conversation you just had was entirely for my benefit?”
I shook my head. “No. I needed to convince Triss, too, and Ssithra for that matter. We have to meet Master Kelos. We have to do it tonight. We can’t let Jax know about it, either before or after. And, we have to do it alone if we don’t want Kelos thinking it’s a double cross. For this to work, I need all three of you on my side.”
Faran’s shadow shifted, so that a phoenix now joined the dragon. “I am convinced,” said Ssithra. “What is our part?”
Faran held up a hand. “Not so fast, Ssithra. I want to know more about Master Kelos’s message.”
“There’s not much to tell,” I said before giving her the details.
“All right,” said Faran. “I don’t like it either, but I think you’ve got to go to that meeting. So, what do Ssithra and I have to do about Jax?”
“Besides not trying to kill her while I’m gone? Not much. Just tell her that I was up on the roof about half an hour before she got back and that I thought I saw something suspicious. So I went to check it out. Then, when I get back, find a way to let me know when it was I’m supposed to have left.”
“Really, that’s it? You think she’ll buy it?”
“If she asks for more than that, I’ll tell her it was just a couple of none-too-clever thatchcutters looking for an easy nut to crack. After I warned them off, I followed them till they tried and botched a shutter job and then I headed home. On my way back from my meeting with Kelos, I’ll break a set of top-story shutters a mile or two from here and do it loud and stupid enough to get the owner screaming for the watch.”
Faran nodded. “Then if Jax has her people ask around there’ll be a nice clean trail to corroborate you. That should work nicely. All right, now that I know what you’re up to, I can go and get my bath.”
“One question before you do,” I said. “How did you know I was up to something?”
“You agreed to let me go off alone with Jax way too easily, considering how hard you’ve been working to keep me from killing her. The only reason I could think of for you to do that was that you wanted to get me out from underfoot.”
“Point. I screwed up there.”
“No wonder, you are getting awfully oooold for this stuff.”
“Brat.”
“Geezer.”
* * *
The
university bells were ringing a quarter past ten when I dropped from the dormer onto the patch of roof where I’d first seen Kelos. I’d spent the better part of an hour circling around the place and looking for any signs of a trap, but I hadn’t found anything. No surprise. Not with Kelos involved. If he were laying a trap for me I wouldn’t see it till the jaws closed.
Damn but that’s clever!
Triss said into my mind.
What?
Kelos has left us a message that only a Blade could read.
Oh, how?
Kelos got Malthiss to concentrate himself completely on the tip of one of his fingers. Then he used that finger to write a shadow-trail message on the roof here.
That is clever. Why didn’t we think of that?
No need for it, I suppose. I wasn’t allowed to tell you about the shadow trails before the fall of the temple. It was a secret between the Shades and the highest masters. Afterward, I didn’t have any reason to think about it, not until we ran into Devin. Now that we’re dealing with other Blades again, I’m sure we’d have figured it out eventually.
What does it say?
Triss swore in Shade for a moment.
What?
I asked.
“Aral, quarter after ten? If so, then you’re exactly a quarter of an hour behind me and I still know you well enough to predict some of your actions. I’ve left a trail for you starting on the round stone tower directly north of you. You should just be able to see it from where you’re standing. Follow it. I know you don’t trust me, and I don’t expect you to. That’s why the trail will take you someplace where we can talk without you feeling you have to keep looking over your shoulder.”
He signs it, “Your brother and onetime teacher, Kelos.”
“He has no right to call me brother,” I said in a shaking voice. “Not anymore.” I closed my eyes then and clenched my fists so hard I half expected my nails to tear the skin of my palms.
We can turn back.
Triss’s mental voice was barely louder than a whisper.
No. We still need to do this.
I didn’t know the chimney forest of Ar half so well as I knew Tien’s, so getting around was just flat slower than it would have been back home. But the trail that Kelos had left me was clear. It led directly toward the university, which struck me as a little bit odd. As a rule, Blades avoid other mages where we can. Magical power is a huge wild card in any game, and going anywhere near a Magelands university is like playing cards with a whole roomful of people holding nothing but jokers. Even Kelos has to tread carefully around such people. So, I was more than a little surprised when the trail brought me straight to the university wall, without turning aside.
Are you sure?
I asked Triss.
There’s an arrow here at the end of the trail pointing straight across to the university. Also, I don’t think you can see it with your eyes, but there’s about a foot of black silk rope trailing over the wall by the pillar there across the way.
I’m surprised you can pick it out against the dark wall. Normally you don’t do well with that sort of minimal contrast.
The rope has been treated so it stands out to my senses. I’ve never seen anything like it before, but it would be difficult for a Shade to miss.
A foot, you say. Is it tight against the wall? Or is it hanging out where I could grab it easily at the end of a short sail-jump across this alley here?
It’s an easy grab, but you knew it would be.
I did, because it was there for me, and Kelos wanted to make things easy. I wondered what he had done about the wards. The entire top of the wall glowed with intense spell-light, every inch of the surface crawling with alarm and attack glyphs, including the area directly above the rope. I had no idea how Kelos had managed to leave the wards intact and unblocked there and still left a hole that I could pass through. But I had no doubt that he had.
At that point, even if I hadn’t had other reasons to make the jump, curiosity would have driven me to it. I wanted to know what he’d done. So I asked Triss to give me control for a bit, took three running steps, jumped . . . and nearly fell out of the air when a huge bang and a flash happened at ground level about fifty feet to my right. I had just enough presence of mind to keep my wings out and make my grab when I hit the wall.
What the fuck was that?
I thought.
Of course, Triss couldn’t respond from within his dream state, so I got no answer. Swearing quietly but continuously to myself all the while, I reshrouded myself and hung quietly from the rope while I waited for my pulse to return to normal. I also tried to figure out what had happened. A couple of locals had gone to look around the area where the noise had come from.
“Looks like someone blew up Snurri’s rain barrel,” said the first.
“Damned university prank,” said another. “There oughta be a law.”
“Wouldn’t do any good with these youngblood mages,” replied a third. “They’d just see it as a challenge.”
“That’s the truth,” said the first. “Guess Snurri’ll have to complain to the proctors at the university. Won’t catch the prankster of course, but maybe the administration will at least replace his barrel.”
There was more grumbling over the next few minutes and much speculation as to whether the university would replace the barrel, but I shut it out. I knew damned well that no student had done the deed. It was Kelos providing a distraction for any watchers who might otherwise have chanced to look up and see me gliding across the alley.
When the neighborhood chorus left, I braced my feet on the wall and very carefully raised my head enough to look at the top of the wall where the rope ran. A thick piece of leather-backed black felt lay across the wards and spikes. They had done the latter up fancy with silver and steel both, not that any of the restless dead or creatures of wild magic were likely to attempt to enter a mage university. I poked at the mat with a fingertip. It was obviously a custom wardblack, but unlike any I’d ever seen before.
Normally, to make a wardblack, you lay a piece of enchanted silk across the top of the wards you want to fool and let it soak up a copy of the guard spells. Done right, it almost never sets them off. Then you attach that to a chunk of spelled felt that effectively mutes the wards for as long as you leave it in place atop them. In most circumstances, that’s all you need. Either you cross the warded area fast and pull up the wardblack behind you. Or, if it’s in a not terribly well-traveled space, you leave it in place for a cleaner and faster exit on your way out.
But most wards aren’t attached to a university with literally thousands of mages inside. Here, the spell-light of the wards was almost as much protection as the wards themselves. If you left a wardblack in place for any length of time, someone would be bound to notice the dark patch it created. Kelos had gotten around that by sewing a bunch of fake wards into the top surface of the felt and enchanting them with a simple charm to make them glow in magesight. Add in the leather to provide a protection against the spikes, and you had a temporary doorway through the university’s security that you could leave open behind you.
It was the easiest thing in the world for me to pull myself up atop the wall and then, following another shadow-trail arrow, drop down inside and head across the lawn. The trail led me from there to . . .
You’re not serious. The fucking proctor house? He wants me to meet him on top of the offices of the university police department?
Apparently,
sent Triss.
Apparently.
12
S
ometimes
words cut deeper than any blade. Sometimes it doesn’t even matter which words, only who says them.
“Hello, Aral.” Master Kelos stood with his arms crossed and one hip leaning casually against the proctor house chimney. He was dressed in the full ritual clothing of the Blade—loose and flowing grays in a half dozen shades. “It’s good to see you alive.”
Without thinking about it, I found my hands on the hilts of my swords, my thumbs on their release catches.
“Don’t.” He said it quietly, not an order, nor even a serious request, but somehow I couldn’t resist, and my hands fell away from my swords. “Oh, good, you’re going to be sensible. I’d hate to have you start a fight up here. With a university full of mages around it wouldn’t go well for either of us.”
“What makes you so sure I wouldn’t be willing to die if it meant taking you with me?”
“Nothing at all. In fact, I suspect that if you were sure that’s the way things would play out, and if that was the only price, we’d already be fighting. But there’s Triss to consider, and Malthiss. As well as all the many, many things that could go wrong along the way. That’s why you weren’t there at the fall of the temple, actually. Nor Siri either.”
“What?” The word fell out of my mouth, barely loud enough for even me to hear, and it left behind a feeling of cold that made my jaw feel numb and useless.
“You don’t think it was a coincidence that our best and most-talented young assassins were a thousand miles away when Heaven’s Hand and Sword arrived at the temple, do you? You were both far too valuable to waste and too dedicated not to force them to kill you if you’d been there.”
“But the goddess chose us for those missions. . . .”
“She did, yes. But she did so in consultation with the shadow council, her most senior priests and Blades. I requested that you and Siri and a few others receive assignments that would put you out of harm’s way, in hopes that someday I would be able to bring you back into the fold.”
“You knew they were coming? But that means that . . .”
“I betrayed Namara. Yes, it does, and it was the hardest decision I ever made.”
The numbness in my jaw had spread to my whole body by then. I felt like I no longer had any real control over my limbs or actions. Sometimes, when you’re drinking, there’s a moment where you stop feeling like it’s
you
that’s drinking, where you feel completely disconnected from yourself. It’s like you can see what’s happening to you but it’s not you that’s doing it. This was like that, only without the alcohol. Without any drugs at all, just my own shock and betrayal slowly poisoning me from within.
So, it was doubly startling when Triss suddenly changed into dragon form and lunged toward Master Kelos. Kelos didn’t so much as twitch, but before Triss had gone three feet, Malthiss was there, wrapped around Triss like a constrictor. The older Shade moved so fast I didn’t see it, didn’t see anything beyond a blurred impression of the shadows around Kelos’s neck and shoulders flickering. It made a sharp contrast to the casual, almost leisurely way he’d acted against the envoy back in Tien.
The world blurred and flickered again, and I was standing a few feet from Kelos, my swords drawn, one point inches from his throat, the other hovering in front of his heart.
“Tell Malthiss to let Triss go, right now.”
Kelos still hadn’t moved. “Don’t,” he said in the exact same tone he’d used earlier. “I’d rather not have to hurt you.”
“Kill him,” said Triss. “It’ll be worth whatever it costs.”
I . . . couldn’t. I tried, or at least I intended to, but the arm that I wanted to thrust the blade through his throat wouldn’t move no matter how hard I thought at it that it should.
“Sensible,” said Kelos. “I’m almost surprised. Perhaps the years have taught you some of the things that I never could. Now, I want you to move back to where you were standing before. Then Malthiss will let Triss go, and we can continue our conversation.”
“I don’t think so,” I said. “You let Triss go first, and then we’ll discuss the rest.”
“I’m afraid it doesn’t work that way,” said Kelos. “Do be sensible again. We’ll both be happier for it.”
“No.”
“Your choice.”
Now, Kelos moved. I knew he was going to. I was ready for him. It didn’t help, not even with my swords already in a position to strike. It was almost as fast as what happened with Malthiss. One instant Kelos was leaning casually against the chimney, arms crossed. The next, his arms drove forward and apart, using the knives in the wrist sheaths under his shirt as armor against my edges. He struck the blade of my swords, pushing my right sword to the left, and my left to the right as he slid toward me, putting my arms into a cross-bind.
I tried to backpedal, but he moved faster, shoving my own arms back into my chest with the weight of his body. Before I could recover in any way, I felt Kelos hook a foot behind my ankle and ride me to the rooftop. A moment later, I was flat on my back with Kelos kneeling on my chest and arms, gasping. He took the swords from my hands almost casually and flipped them around. Cold steel kissed my wrists as he slowly forced the blades down through the straps of my wrist sheaths and deep into the lead and planks of the roof, pinning me.
The most shocking thing about the whole maneuver was how quiet it had been. Even my fall had been controlled to minimize noise. If someone was in the room directly below us, the sword tips coming through the ceiling would have been much more likely to draw their attention than my landing.
“There,” he said, “that ought to illustrate my point nicely.” Then he was off me and stepping back to retake his place against the chimney. “That was very badly done, Aral. Once you drew steel you shouldn’t have stopped to threaten. You should have gone for the kill. I might have been forced to hurt more than your pride, but you would at least have had a fair shot at spilling some of my blood in the process. This was beneath you.”
Another flicker and a blur and Malthiss snapped back to peer at me over Kelos’s shoulder as he had so many times in the past. With an angry snarl, Triss moved sideways to crouch on my chest, though he didn’t try to attack either Kelos or Malthiss again. Instead, he just sat there, quietly but steadily hissing at them.
“But none of this is why I brought you here,” said Kelos. “Jax intends to betray you to the Hand.”
“Yeah, I’m on top of that. It’s not going to happen. I won’t let it, though I’m hoping she’ll choose to come to me and talk about it rather than force me to stop her. And, yes, I do understand exactly how ironic that sounds coming from me to you right now.”
Kelos smiled sadly. “It’s not what I wanted, you know, not what I would have chosen if I could have seen any other way. Much like what I am doing now.”
Triss’s hissing rose and Malthiss leaned forward over Kelos’s shoulder. “Triss, desist.” Then he added something scathing in Shade, and somewhat to my surprise, Triss shut up.
“Why?” I didn’t know whether I was asking about the temple or the current situation. I just knew that I wanted answers.
“Eleven years ago, you killed Zhan’s king, Ashvik the Sixth. You were the fourth Blade to make the attempt and the first to survive the experience. Yes?”
I nodded and used the opportunity of that movement to shift my arms so that my sword’s edges began to cut into the straps on my wrists.
“What good did it do? In the long run?”
I shifted to look Kelos in the eyes, working at cutting the straps with the same motion. “I brought him Justice. Isn’t that enough? Isn’t that what you taught me? That we have to show the people that not even kings are above paying for their crimes?”
“It’s not enough, Aral. You know that Thauvik took the throne when his brother died, right?” I nodded. “Do you think he’s one whit less of a monster than Ashvik was?”
“Well, I certainly haven’t heard of him invading Kadesh, or murdering his own sons.” Though Maylien had told me he was doing plenty of harm.
“That’s true, but it’s not because he’s a better person. It’s not because he learned that he mustn’t do evil. No. What he learned is, ‘don’t get caught.’ His first murder happened within hours of taking the throne, and he’s quietly killed hundreds since.”
“Thauvik being too scared to become a full-blown and highly visible monster means we’ve failed?” I demanded. “That we shouldn’t even try? I don’t see that.”
“Oh no. That’s not what I’m saying at all. Thauvik’s stance means we were never allowed to go far enough. We were never allowed to go all the way.”
“What are you talking about?” asked Triss. “Isn’t killing a king going all the way?”
His talking now reminded me that Malthiss hadn’t said a word since he told Triss to quit hissing. Though he’d never been the most talkative of Shades, this seemed more of a speaking silence. I just wished I knew what it was speaking of.
Kelos shook his head in response to Triss’s question. “The pair of you weren’t the first to kill a monster King of Zhan. I killed Ashvik’s great-grandfather, who was a damned nasty piece of work, and Alinthide killed
his
niece when she played regent to Ashvik’s grandfather and polo with servants’ heads. In the service of the goddess I killed seven rulers and hundreds of lesser nobles and generals. But no matter how many times I administered Namara’s justice, new monsters just sprang up to take their places.”
He squatted down so that our eyes were closer to the same level. “It never gets any better, Aral. Not in any meaningful way. I’ve lived longer than almost any other Blade, and what I’ve seen is that when you stomp out evil over here, it just springs up again over there. Or it comes back again a few years or decades later. Killing kings isn’t enough. I told Namara that more times than I can count, but she would never agree to do more.”
“Like what?” I’d cut through the straps on my wrist sheaths by then. Though the swords still pinned my sleeves, that wouldn’t hold me. But I still didn’t move. Kelos clearly had more to say, and he was the one who’d taught me never to do something that will shut up a source of information until you absolutely had to.
“Get rid of the damn kings completely.”
That was an argument I could almost agree with. “And replace them with what? Rulers elected from among the elite, like in Kodamia or the way the Magearchs of the universities are chosen here in the Magelands?”
“Why would I want to replace it with anything? The whole idea of one person having any kind of ruling authority over another is corrupt at its roots. I want to tear the whole system out of the ground and burn it. Injustice stems from inequality. The only way to eliminate it is to level the field so that no one person sets themselves up above the others.”
“I’m not sure that’s going to work,” said Triss. “Your people seem to have a natural drive to rule over their fellows.”
“That’s why the order of the Blade will have to continue for at least a little while after we take down the nobility. We’ll need to chop down those who would become kings until a new system of self-government can arise on top of the ashes of the old autocracy.”
Part of me thought that what Kelos was saying had some merit, if only in a purely abstract sort of way. But I didn’t believe it would work any more than Triss had. Real people didn’t act the way that Kelos seemed to be saying they would. No, at the moment, my real question was whether Kelos believed any of it or if he was playing me. He certainly sounded serious; calm, collected, intense. But then, he always sounded that way. And still, not one word from Malthiss.
While Kelos
might
believe every word he was saying, there was no way for me to know that, this side of his implementing his ideas. He was perfectly capable of acting as though the total destruction of the ruling classes of the eleven kingdoms was his goal right up until whatever his real plan was needed him to act otherwise. I was very tempted to ask him how betraying the goddess to the Son of Heaven served any of those goals. But I thought I had enough now to make some good guesses, and time was passing. I had other, more important questions, and Kelos seemed in an answering mood.
“And what you’re doing now? How does that serve your plans? Why did you set that trail for Faran to find?”
“You figured out that I left that for you? Excellent. I tried very hard to make it look like chance, but I needed you to see what was going on with the Signet and Jax. I got very lucky when you and she arrived so close together on the very first attempt. By the way, you might as well slice yourself the rest of the way free. It’s not like you’re going to take me by surprise when you do. But I would appreciate it if you left your swords where they are for now.”
So I did, both. “I still don’t know
why
you wanted me to know what’s going on with Jax and the Signet.”
“Because I need you to free Loris and the others without getting yourself or Jax killed in the process, of course. I’ve lost too many of you already. There were almost four hundred Blades and trainees once. Over three hundred of those died at the fall, with more killed since then. The Signet set this play up on the sly, so I didn’t have a chance to block it in advance. If she had her way, every single one of us would be dead. I can’t let that happen. I need all of you alive to help me once I take the system down.”
“Why not simply kill the Signet yourself?” asked Triss. “Why involve us?”
“I . . . can’t do it myself for a number of reasons. Not least of which, it would interfere with my longer-range plans. And I can’t get Jax to do it. She’s not ready to know that I’m alive again yet, not after what the Hand did to her and Loris. It would distract her too much.”
“Don’t you mean what
you
did to her and Loris?” I asked furiously.
Kelos’s expression didn’t change. “Not at all. I thought they’d been killed in the battle for the temple. It wasn’t until months later that I discovered I’d been lied to. As soon as I found out where they were and what was happening to them, I arranged an opportunity for them to escape.”
“How very nice of you to do that after arranging for the temple to fall in the first place.”