Mightiest of Swords (The Inkwell Trilogy Book 1) (15 page)

              “Where is Shred?” I repeated, though at that point maintaining my composure was a mounting difficulty.

              “In a house,” our mystery man answered. By the sound of his accent, he was a Scot. Undoubtedly, he also knew he was under a truth enchantment as he intended to answer questions as minimally—yet truthfully—as possible. This was going to be a delicate and tedious process. But we had the time.

              “Is Shred alive?” Joy bent over him and asked. I calculated what tack to take for the next question after he answered that one.

              “Probably,” he replied snidely.

              “Is he in a house in Cambridge?” Gavin asked, catching on to the fact were playing a game in some respects.

              “Yes,” the bearded man responded. It was a game to him, though he had not quite figured out yet that he’d lost.

              Six questions later, we had an address with the help of presenting him an online map application. An additional four questions allowed us to discover that Shred was being guarded by only two men.

              “Who are you? What is your name?” The intensity of the moment overcame me. We were getting answers. Finally. I looked into his eyes, letting him know by my gaze that his mortality was a matter of serious question.

              “Frederick Linden. Dr. Frederick Linden.” Linden realized four or five questions ago the futility in trying to evade questions. His haughty attitude had dissipated into churlish sneer. It was, ultimately, a look of defeat. Having him realize it allowed me to keep the anger welling within me at bay.

              “Dr. Linden, for whom do you work?” Gavin posed.

              “I work on behalf of humanity,” he spat and his look of superiority returned in an instant.

              “Don’t we all.” I said, exasperated.

              “No. The gods do not.” This was a gift of information meant to pique further questions. I’d bite, but only with the right question. Joy and Gavin both looked at me, then back to Linden. They, too, were trying to formulate their own questions—or set of them—to ask.

              Joy held up her finger in a brief gesture, stalling for a moment before asking the question she was still forming. “Dr. Linden, who, specifically, has tasked you with this mission to kidnap Shred, kill Tolliver, and murder any other mages? And what is the specific name of the cause for which you fight? And lastly, who now wields the
Sucikhata
? Three questions. Do not cheat me.” Her voice trembled, but was fearsome, speaking with an authority I instantly respected.

              Linden’s eyes suddenly flashed rage, but just as suddenly stabilized. “The leader of my organization is Doctor von Ranke. If the
Sucikhata
is your name for the weapon, then he is the one who wields it. We cause is one of revolution against the slavery of superstition and evolution of our species. We operate under the organizational moniker of Revolve.”

              I doubted I could ask many more questions without getting circuitous, backwards, non-truths. And if he knew where to find this von Ranke, there would be no way to get to him before he moved to his next target.

              But there was one question I had in mind from the moment I shot him with my dart. “Dr. Linden, do you know who killed my father?”

              For the first time since we began our session, Linden refused to look at me. “Yes.”

Chapter 14

              Joy was up and on Linden in less than a heartbeat. Gavin restrained her, but it did not stop her from a barrage of words.

              “YOU MOTHERFUCKER! YOU TELL ME WHO KILLED MY DAD!” she bellowed.

              Not for the first time was I happy about the remoteness of our location.

              “I did,” Linden rasped.

              He was motionless, as he could only move muscles in his back and his neck. The exhaustion and frustration I felt in that moment coupled with the burden of knowledge just dropped on Joy and me was overwhelming. I laughed, knowing full well it was out of place, when I noticed the discomfort of Linden’s current predicament incised upon his pock-marked face. I sunk down, covering my face and my tears. This was not a reaction I expected to have. In the gravity of the moment, I found solace in vindication. Yes, my father had been murdered. And I had his killer right in front of me, at my mercy. Tears flowed freely and it was now obvious my laughter had turned to crying.

              I sat in the grass of the cemetery that could well have doubled as a garden, rubbing the water from my eyelids and wiping it on my jeans. I sobbed harder because the word mercy seemed like the most foreign word I had ever learned. By the time I looked up, I saw that Gavin maintained a vigil over our prisoner. I used the bottom of my shirt to clear more tears from my eyes.

              Joy took my efforts to regain my composure to recollect her own.

              I cleared my voice, “Aside from following orders, why was my father’s—our fathers’—deaths necessary?”

              Linden scoffed. “You magicians aid and abet the gods. That is reason enough.” The momentary look of shame all but disappeared. My father was keeper of the
Sucikhata
, and his murder was somehow tied to this Revolve’s plan to retrieve it. The minute I opened my vault and Gavin walked out with the weapon, I was expendable. More than that—now I was a target. Gavin had tried to keep Joy and me pacified with his Lotus-Eater. I we had remained at our apartment in Springfield, chances are we would have been eliminated by now.

              I texted Joy’s phone so Pushan would make his way back to pick us up.

              Gavin, in the meantime, was able to confirm that Linden’s organization poisoned Tolliver with polonium-210. No manner of healing would have cured Tolliver if he were exposed to the radioactive element from sundry and unknown sources. Yet, it was curious how Gavin was not also showing signs of radiation poisoning. They must have recognized Gavin’s role in stealing the
Sucikhata
and let him be.

              This organization seemed to be made up of educated men, both intelligent and formidable. Yet, their penchant for blood and brutality undermined any good they claimed to work toward.

              As Pushan drove slowly up a driveway that ended in a footpath to our right, a last question suddenly occurred to me to ask: “Where is the Well of Gods?”

              Linden shook his head, finally satisfied he had nothing to divulge. “I do not know, Well-Keeper. But I understand you do?”

              He didn’t know that I didn’t know its location. Maybe I was a part of their plan for the short-term after all. I kept my expression as passive as I could. There had to be something about Dad’s copy of
Gulliver.
Pouring over that book in the near future was suddenly of paramount importance.

              “Let’s go get Shred. I’m done with this festering pile of shit.” In not bending over to wipe his bindings clear, it was a tacit order to leave him be. Let him rot. Granting Linden mercy of any sort was something above what I was capable, despite all I had ever read in my books and stories about finding room in one’s heart to forgive. There was no mercy, no forgiveness for Linden. The absolute most I was capable was leaving him there in the Mill Road Cemetery; immobile and cloaked. Given the privacy of the location, he would have to yell himself hoarse for someone to find him…and even then they would not see him. His best hope was to wait for rain or hoped he sweat off his bindings. The biting September chill made that seem unlikely.

              I piled into the taxi behind Gavin and Joy. We relayed everything we learned from Linden to Pushan, including the address of the house were given. Pushan took us out to Mill Road and drove us to Shred’s location.

              We had to assume that there were now three men in the house. While one man could, conceivably, be keeping an eye on our hotel room in case of our return, it was just as likely that they’d all be waiting at the house for Linden. Up until now, and virtually confirmed by the intelligence we’d gathered up until that point, Revolve not only disdained magic, but meant to kill anyone who used it.

              I wrote out several sleeping spells and packed them into darts as we came out of Cambridge and to a more rural enclave called Madingley. Pushan fidgeted restlessly. We already told him that the
Sucikhata
must not be in Cambridge, so whatever vexed him was not clear. It was possible that telling him about von Ranke and Revolve was enough, but it was more likely he was concerned for his friends and colleagues.

              I packed more spells into darts: one for flame and one for fog; and one I discovered shortly after my dad died in a scroll gathering dust in the corner of the alcove in the vault. I would keep it in a separate pocket, away from the others, and hope I wouldn’t have to use it.

              The house we came to in Madingley was one of the few set back from the road, shrouded by a fence line, hedges, and trees that only let us glimpse a thatched roof on two-story house.

              “Are you ready?” Pushan slowed to a stop at the entrance of the driveway.

              “We are.” Thankfully, Gavin had already written out his own version of an obfuscation spell and sat near-far enough from me that he seemed to shimmer in the pale light of the day. I still wore my own spell, so only had to perform the same spell upon Joy.

              Pushan rubbed at the rubber on his steering wheel in agitation, nearly breaking my concentration.  I had just finished a final flourish when someone rapped on Pushan’s window. If startled, Pushan brushed it off quickly and rolled his window down.

              “Yes?” Pushan asked the man.

              He was tall—somewhere in the range of 6’5”, with caramel-colored skin, goatee, wearing a button-up shirt, tie, and vest. The sleeves of his shirt were rolled up, revealing sinewy arms and a tattoo of a symbol I did not recognize.

              “Are you looking for someone, sir?” He spoke with a refined English accent that belied his physical appearance. In fact, nothing about his voice matched his build.

              I tapped Gavin and Joy each on their knees and motioned toward the house. I pointed for Gavin to roll down his window, as I would not be able to take a clear shot through the plexiglass that separated us from Pushan. Once Gavin had the window down, I crawled over to him and he helped me out by hoisting me out by hip and thigh. I took aim and fired at the man’s arm. He slumped down immediately, hitting his head against Pushan’s window sliding down in a prism of blood.

              I climbed out completely and onto the roof and half-whispered, “Get out! Now!

              Gavin and Joy swung the car door open, leaving it open. Gavin came around to the driver’s side to help Pushan carry the robust man around to our door and lift him inside and quietly close the door.

              “Come on!” I walked toward the front door of the home, pointed at Gavin and then Joy and then to the door. Gavin hopped the gate and, presumably, meant to approach through the back door.

              Warily, I stepped to the side of the door and reached my left hand over to depress the thumb latch of the front door. I had no time to determine whether or not the door was locked when a gunshot burst through the door, splintering wood. Joy symmetrically on the other side of the door jumped down and I found myself doing the same. I crawled behind the bush to my immediate right that grew under one of the front windows. I pawed around at the ground, my feet, the bush for anything to throw but found no rocks or stones. I emptied the dart gun and used the handle as a hammer to shatter glass. Gunshots came through the window. I reloaded the dart gun, hoping the local constables were not already called. I waved at Joy and motioned for her to do the same thing to the window on her side.

              Joy clawed around her and likewise came up with nothing. Instead, my fearless apprentice scooted closer to the window and knocked three times in quick succession. It was just enough of a distraction. I popped up, narrowed my sights on the shooter, and took my own shot. He collapsed on the floor.

              Gavin was already kicking down the door on the other side and arrived just as Joy and I were checking the bottom floor for any other inhabitants.

              Gavin bounded up the set of stairs and disappeared with utter disregard for himself. “Check the rooms on the right! I’ll take the left. Hurry!” I yelled after him. With my reloaded dart gun at the ready, I followed Gavin, though taking much more care ascending than he did. Joy flanked me with nothing more than ceramic pitcher she found in a bowl in the dining room.

              She took the two rooms at the end of the all so we could meet in the middle.

              “Over here!” Joy called out. Gavin and I both ran to the room from which her voice had come.

              Shred sat on a dining room chair that matched the set at the bottom of the stairs. The rest of the room was empty, except for a rug upon which his chair rested. His shirt was matted with blood, his face swollen from beatings, and both he and the room stank of his own filth. Though his chest heaved with labored breath, he was mercifully unconscious.  His hands were duct-taped behind him, while both of his legs were duct-taped to a leg on respective sides.              

              Even his mouth was taped closed, but was stuffed with some sort of cloth stuffed inside of his mouth. That wasn’t surprising, as even a musimancer’s voice could be used against him. Except the tape seemed to be hanging on loosely to Shred’s mouth and stubble. More than that, blood oozed from his mouth in spots where the tape was loose.

              Joy pushed his long, stringy hair out of his eyes. I would have knelt next to him, but the rug, too, was soaked in what had to have been blood. I pried the duct tape around his legs from the chair, but with little success. Gavin saw what I was doing and tried pulling at the tape with only slightly more effect.

              I kept looking up at Joy, who was now chanting Shred’s name, caressing his face, and trying to rouse him from his slumber.

              Sirens could be heard in the distance, likely driving up Madingley Road from Cambridge proper. We had two, three minutes tops. I removed the Sharpie in my jacket and began writing a hexagonal healing pattern on a dry patch of Shred’s skin on trapezius. I used the Sharpie to unbind the duct tape in each place it was affixed to Shred. With each pattern performed, the polymers in the tape melted off of Shred without any heat. Once free, Gavin gathered him up in the same fireman-carry he used on me in Trivium and Linden at the cemetery.

              We cleared the stairs just as two hatchback police cars pulled up to the house. Pushan must have parked the car away from the house, otherwise the cars could not have made it up the narrow driveway.

              As long as we were all cloaked, they would not see us. The rain had started again, making me glad I wrote Shred’s spells in permanent marker. However, the cloaking spells for all three of us were in ink. We would have to take our chances and guard our marks from the rainfall. When we came to the end of the driveway, I saw more police cars approaching, but on the opposite side of the road, I also saw that Pushan had pulled into a driveway four houses down and somehow managed to look like he belonged there.

              Each of our spells held fast in spite of the rain, at least long enough for the police not to notice us by the time we reached Pushan’s cab.

Gavin plopped Shred in over the well-built Revolve thug who was still in the cab, fast asleep and snoring. I wrote a sleeping spell in ink directly on his forehead and removed the dart from his skin.

              “It’s coming down pretty hard, Grey—you sure he’ll be unconscious long enough after we put him in the ground?” Joy was in the process of lifting both of his legs, but stopped, waiting for Gavin and for me to grab an arm each.

              “Yes. It’ll hold for a minute or two. The spell won’t dissolve until the rain makes it completely illegible.” Gavin came around the man’s other side, so I grabbed the arm on my side, brushing his tattoo…

             
A library. Like one found in an old manner house. Talking. Black. Playing cards. King of Hearts. The bird. Black…

              “Jesus—you all right?” Gavin shouted at me, holding on to the Revolver’s arm and buttocks from below.

              I gazed at him, not understanding where I was or who even was in that moment. I let go of the man’s arm and Gavin and Joy sloughed him off to the side, face down.

              “Yeah. Yes.” I swallowed hard and entered the taxi next to Shed, even though it was more an act of instinct than intent. I wiped at tears drops I’d mistaken for rain.