Lost (14 page)
Authors: Sarah Prineas
“What do you read?” he asked. He spoke with an accent, almost like his tongue was a knife and it sharpened the words so they sounded pointed and prickling.
I turned the book and held it up to show him the title stamped in gold on the front cover.
“Ah!” The sorcerer-king moved to the side, where he could see me better, and where I could see him. Even though he had to know that I’d picked the lock to get in, he was smiling. Pretending to be my friend. “You have an interest in pyrotechnics?”
“Yes,” I said.
He leaned over and tapped the book. His fingernails were painted gold. “This is the second treatise of Jaspers. My own rare copy. Have you read the first treatise?”
I nodded.
“And I assume you have read the Prattshaw book.”
I nodded again.
“Hmmm! Who are you, precisely?”
“I’m Connwaer,” I said. No point in lying about it.
“Ah!” He rested his finger on his lips, then
pointed at me. “A true name, one that is meaningful to the magic. It means
black bird
, I believe.”
Is meaningful to the magic
, he said. Did he know the magic was a living being, just like I did, and that spellwords were its language?
“Here in Desh, Connwaer also means
black shadow
,” he said.
I blinked.
“Many words, as we use them, have two meanings, so that we mean two different things when we say them.” He smiled, and when he did, I realized that even though his hair was white, he wasn’t much older than I was. “You do remind me of a black shadow,” he said.
I looked down at myself. I was wearing the black sweater Benet had given me, and my hair had gotten shaggy again and hung down in my eyes. But I had a feeling he meant that I looked dark, like a shadow,
and
that he’d seen me watching him.
“I am the lord of this city, Jaggus,” he said,
settling into a chair. “Also a true name.”
I wondered what
Jaggus
meant; I glanced toward the end of the table, where I’d left the lexicon.
“Now, my shadow, you have not yet answered my question.”
I thought back over our conversation.
Who are you?
he’d asked. Oh. “I’m from Wellmet.”
“Yes. A servant of the Lady Rowan’s companion, Sir Argent?”
I took a deep breath. “Yes,” I answered, hating the taste of the lie in my mouth.
“Pyrotechnics seem an odd interest for a servant.”
I shrugged. Drats. I needed to not talk to him anymore. He was too sharp.
“And from Wellmet. I know a man from Wellmet who has an interest in pyrotechnics. Perhaps you know him, too? His name is Flinglas.”
Nevery, he meant.
“Do you know him?” Jaggus asked.
I nodded.
“He is a friend, then?”
I looked down at the book, at the gold letters stamped on the cover. “No.”
“Ah. Not a friend. But not an enemy, either, I think. He is, perhaps, your master?”
I shook my head.
“I see.” Jaggus got to his feet. He blinked, and in his eyes the black pupils widened like a window opening up on the blackest night sky, no stars. He stared at me for another moment, then, on silent feet, he crossed the carpeted floor and went out the door.
I see,
he’d said. I wondered what he saw with his strange eyes. I had a feeling he already knew who I was and what I was up to.
I got up and went to the end of the table, to the lexicon.
Jaggus
. It meant
destroy
. But its second meaning, in small type, was
broken
.
I wasn’t sure what to think of that.
A
fter leaving Jaggus’s rooms in the gray light of morning, I crept up the stairs toward Argent’s rooms. Rowan was lying in wait for me.
She sat hunched on a step, wrapped in a robe over her nightgown, with a lantern next to her.
“Hello, Ro,” I whispered.
She looked crossly up at me and rubbed her eyes. “What are you up to, Connwaer?”
I sat on the step next to her. “I have to find out what Jaggus is doing.”
“I believe that is my job,” she said.
“Are
you
getting anywhere?” I asked.
She rested her chin on her knees and stared down the dark well of the stairs. “I can’t tell,” she said at last. “Though I agree with you that he’s up to something. I must try talking further with him.”
But talking was taking too long.
We sat quietly. I leaned my shoulder against hers. The light from the lantern flickered golden against the whitewashed walls.
“He’s not going to tell you anything,” I said at last. “Tomorrow night I’ll have a look in his workroom.” He had a secret door in that library somewhere, and I could find it and get in.
At that, Rowan sat up and glared at me. Her hair hung in tangles around her face. “No!” she said.
Her voice echoed off the walls. The door to
the right of the top of the stairs creaked open, and Argent peered out. He came down a few steps, blinking, in bare feet and a spotted blue nightgown. “What is the matter, Lady Rowan?” he asked.
She didn’t even glance at him. “What if you’re caught, Conn? Have you thought of that?”
I shrugged.
She gritted her teeth and made a noise that sounded like
grrrr
. “I could order you, as a member of the envoyage, not to do it.”
“I’m not a member of your envoyage,” I said.
“Do as you’re told, boy,” Argent said.
I glanced over my shoulder at him. “I’m not your servant, Argent,” I said.
Rowan stood up and glared down at me, her hands clenched. In the lantern light, her eyes gleamed silver and furious. “So you’ll just do as you please, Conn, is that what you’re saying?”
I stood up to face her. “Ro, things in Wellmet are getting worse. We have to do
something
.”
She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “Argent,” she said. “Please allow Conn and me to
continue this conversation in private.”
“Of course, Lady Rowan,” he said. He bowed and went back into his rooms.
Rowan opened her eyes. “Yes,” she said. “You’re right. My mother’s letters have not been specific, but I suspect things in Wellmet have gotten very bad. We have to get on with it.”
Good. “Then I’ll sneak into Jaggus’s workroom to see what he’s up to.”
“No, you won’t,” Rowan said. “I need to try one more time to talk to him, to see if I can figure out why he’s sending the Shadows against us. If it is him.”
“It’s him,” I said. The darksilver footprint proved that.
“Maybe.” She shook her head slowly. “I need one last chance to try diplomacy.”
I didn’t say anything. I wasn’t sure, exactly, what
diplomacy
was.
“All right?” Rowan said.
All right, if she really wanted me to wait. I nodded.
Rowan Forestal
I have insisted that Lord Jaggus give me a tour of one of the slowsilver mines, and to my surprise he agreed. Oddly, he suggested that I bring Argent and also Argent’s servant. By that he means Conn, which means Conn isn’t as good a spy as he thinks he is.
I thought carefully about my request. Slowsilver is associated with magic. And Desh is the supplier of much of the Peninsular Duchies’ slowsilver. Yet that supply, according to the pyrotechnist Sparks, has dwindled. I suspect that something is wrong with the slowsilver mines, something that will explain the nature of Wellmet’s danger.
Dear Nevery,
You were right about lockpicking Jaggus’s door
.
He caught me at it
.
I didn’t realize that you knew him
.
He talks like he knows you, anyway
.
I haven’t gotten a look at Jaggus’s locus magicalicus yet, and yes, I’ll be careful when I try for his pocket, and when I check his workroom
.
The only proof I have so far of anything is a darksilver footprint
.
He’s up to something, sure as sure, but I don’t know what, and I don’t know what Wellmet has to do with it
.
I will find out
.
The magic was right to send me here, though. Hello to Benet
.
—Conn
I
was at the table in the room I shared with Argent, finishing up a letter to Nevery. One of the city’s lizards, the same one, I suspected, peered into the inkpot and then, making footprints
along the edge of the paper, came to sit next to my hand.
Across the room, Argent lay on his bed eating plums and reading his book about swordcraft. He had his boots off, and his feet smelled like moldy cheese.
“Go fetch me a pot of tea, boy,” Argent said, and took a juicy bite of plum.
I ignored him. When the ink on my letter was dry, I tipped the lizard onto the table and folded the paper. A bird would be along soon, I expected.
Knock-knock-knock
at the door.
“Go and see who it is,” Argent said.
I folded the paper again and rolled it into a tight tube so it would fit into the bird’s quill.
KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK!
“Go see who’s at the door!” Argent said loudly, and when I didn’t he picked up his boot and threw it at me. I ducked, and it flew past me and out the window.
Rowan flung the door open. “Neither of you
could be bothered, I suppose,” she said. She glared at me. “What are you laughing at, Connwaer?”
“Stupid fool,” Argent grumbled.
“You’d better go get it,” I said to him.
“I’ll send a
servant
for it,” Argent said.
Not me, then.
“Diplomacy,” Rowan muttered. “Patience.” She shook her head. “I was going to ask if you two wanted to join me on a tour of a slowsilver mine.”
I stood up so fast that my chair crashed to the floor. Yes, I wanted to join her.
“Does he have to come?” Argent asked, getting to his feet.
“Lord Jaggus invited him,” Rowan said, giving me a raised-eyebrows look. “I’ll meet you outside.” She left the room, slamming the door behind her.
So the sorcerer-king wanted me along. Sure as sure he knew what I was up to. Maybe he wanted to keep an eye on me. Still, I wasn’t going to miss seeing a slowsilver mine.
As I cleaned my pen and capped the bottle of ink, the lizard crept to the edge of the table and looked up at me with its sharp black eyes. “D’you want to come, too?” I asked. As an answer, it leaped off the table, landing on my sleeve, clinging with its sticky toes. I picked it off and dropped it into my coat pocket. Safer in there.
To get into the mine we climbed into a big bucket on a chain that lowered us down into a dark shaft like a well but without the sparkle of water at the bottom.
The air was hot and sooty.
Creak-rattle-creak
and we went lower and lower and the dark grew thicker. We stayed quiet, me and Rowan and Argent, two white-coated guards, Jaggus, and the minekeeper, a fat man with a beard and jingling bracelets on his wrists.
“So!” said the minekeeper. His voice echoed in the darkness. “We go down a bit farther and a short way farther into the mine and we will show
you the slowsilver extraction facility.”
Creak-rattle
and down we went for a long way, until we stopped with a jerk. I could feel the others close by in the bucket, and hear the rustle of their clothes and their breathing, but the dark pressed up against my face like a dusty pillow.
“Ah,” muttered the minekeeper. “Here we are.” I heard stone striking stone, saw a spark, and then a candle flared. The keeper unchained the gate and we got out of the bucket. The candle flame pushed back the heavy darkness, and we stood blinking in a faint circle of light.
“Why don’t you use werelights?” I asked, and
—ights, ights, ights
came back as an echo.
They all stared at me. Jaggus’s eyes grew wide and dark, then turned blue again.
“Oh, no,” the minekeeper said. The bracelets jingled on his wrists. “Werelights are unsafe in the mine. Use of magic is strictly forbidden here. The magic, ah”—he glanced aside at Jaggus and paused—“it ah, makes the mine very, very unsafe.
I have an oil lantern just here, and it will give us more light.” Taking the candle with him, he went to fetch a lantern.
As good a chance as any. In the darkness, Jaggus was just a shadow, his two guards looming up behind him. I edged closer and—
quick hands
—dipped into the pocket of his long-skirted coat. Empty. Drats. I reached around him and tried the other pocket. Nothing. He didn’t have his locus magicalicus on him.
The keeper came back with a lantern. By its light I could see that we were in a tunnel with soot-blackened walls and a rock ceiling that slanted down over our heads.
“This way, if you please,” said the keeper.
We went through the tunnel, the keeper, Rowan and Jaggus, then the two guards, then me and Argent.
Up ahead, the lantern light flickered against the walls. A faint
thump, thump, thump
came up through the ground, making my legs tremble. In
the distance I heard the echoey sound of metal grinding on metal. It reminded me of the workroom under Dusk House—and of the device Crowe and Pettivox had made to imprison the magic. It wasn’t the same thing, but something about the mine wasn’t right. In my pocket, the lizard was trembling. And the high-pitched buzzing sound of Desh’s magic was gone. I’d gotten used to the buzz, just as I was used to the warm presence of Wellmet’s magic. But the minekeeper was right—the magic did not belong in the mine. Something was wrong here, but I didn’t know what.
Beside me, Argent paced along with his hands shoved into his pockets and his head down.
“You all right?” I asked.
He flicked a look up at the ceiling and hunched his shoulders. “Be quiet,
boy
.”
I shrugged.
“Just a bit farther,” the keeper called from ahead, and
—arther, arther, arther
came the echo.
“What is slowsilver for, anyway?” Argent muttered.
For magic, I was about to say, when we came out of the tunnel and into the mine itself.
Lanterns were hung up on wires along the walls, which arched up to a dark ceiling way above. To our right, built into the stone walls, was a huge rusty-metal device, all gears and pistons and steam; it groaned as a giant metal wheel turned ’round, then stopped. Water gushed from a pipe taller than I was; then the flow slowed to a trickle-drip. So this is where all the city’s water was—running the mine’s machinery. A few workers stood around the machine, their faces black with soot. They watched us; they’d shut down the machine while we were there, and would start up again when we left.
Before us was a black pit so wide I could see the lanterns on the other side of it as tiny points of light like stars. A narrow path went around the edge of the pit, spiraling down into the darkness.
Workers carrying packs loaded with stone plodded up the path; more workers with empty packs headed down.
The minekeeper pointed at the pit. “This was once filled with slowsilver,” he said. “Imagine it if you will, like a silver lake here under the ground, with streams of slowsilver flowing through the cracks in the rock. So beautiful.” He kept talking, telling about other mines and other lakes beneath the city, and underground rivers of slowsilver.
The lizard poked its head out of my pocket; I lifted it out and put it on my shoulder so it could see. I could imagine the lake the keeper was talking about. But it was gone, leaving behind an empty, echoing hole. The rivers of slowsilver had all run dry.
What is slowsilver for
, Argent had asked. I remembered a line from the Prattshaw book:
Slowsilver is a contrafusive which is purposed for attracting and constraining or, that is to say,
confining the magic
.
Pettivox had used slowsilver in the prisoning device to keep the magic in.
To keep the magic in
. Slowsilver attracted magic. Was the magical being of Desh tied to this place because of its slowsilver? And if the slowsilver was being stripped away by mining—wouldn’t the being’s connection to the city weaken? I shook my head. It didn’t make sense. Why would Jaggus, a wizard, want to weaken the magic of his own city? Surely he’d want it to be stronger, because that would make him stronger.
Jaggus stepped up beside me. “It is an amazing operation, I think. What do you think of it, my shadow?” he asked.
“I don’t understand it,” I said. “Why are you doing this?”
He smiled and stroked one of his long white braids. “It is a mystery, is it not?” His eyes shifted and he saw the lizard on my shoulder. “Horrid creatures,” he said. “Little spies, always watching.”
With quick hands he snatched the lizard off my shoulder, dropping it onto the stone floor. Before it could skitter away, before I could stop him, he lowered his foot and slowly pressed down. I heard the
crack
of tiny bones.
No!
I stared at him.
He gazed back at me, his eyes gone wide and dark like the pit. He ground his foot harder against the rock floor. In my head, the buzz of the Desh magic gave a high shriek, then quieted. Then he scraped off the bottom of his shoe and walked away to where Rowan and Argent stood with the minekeeper.
I stared down at the smear on the rock floor that had been the little lizard. A shivery chill crept down my neck. He’d killed one of his own city’s lizards. That would be like me or Nevery killing one of the black birds of Wellmet. We wouldn’t, not ever. The air in the cavern grew thicker. I stepped to the edge of the pit and stared down. Was there just the smallest sparkle of slowsilver
down there in the darkness? I leaned forward to see better. No, it was just dark.
I straightened and stepped away from the edge of the pit. Jaggus was killing Desh, his own city, the same as he killed the lizard. I didn’t know why. But I would find out. And I would stop him if I could.