Rebel Elements (Seals of the Duelists) (34 page)

As Bayan scrambled across the window sill, the Chantery’s main door opened. Calder grasped the vines he’d made and flicked them as if they were whips. The vines shrank quickly and pulled Calder up and over the sill, slamming him right into Bayan’s behind. Bayan tumbled into Eward, who accidentally yanked on Tarin’s hair as he tried to keep his balance.

Eward slapped a hand over her mouth when she cried out in annoyance. Everyone froze in the heap in which they’d landed and waited for what seemed like the inevitable appearance of Master witten Oost.

But he didn’t stump up the stairs. He didn’t waft in through the window, either, or arrive in any manner whatsoever. After a while, Bayan dared to peek out the window.

There was no sign of Master witten Oost below.

“Either he’s a forgiving man, or somehow he dinna notice us, with all the workings of the universe cranking about in his mental scope,” Calder said.

“Let’s talk to Doc Theo,” Tarin prompted. “I’m starving!”

They headed downstairs. When Doc Theo spotted them coming down the stairs instead of using the door or one of the back tunnels, he gave them a sharp look, but said only, “Something I can help you with?”

“We got your note,” Calder said quietly.

“Kakios Phokapolou signed himself out from Peace Village the day Kiwani was attacked,” Doc said. “He had blond dreadlocks, and the Peace Village Chantery records rule out everyone else who left that day, ’cept for a missing fella named Imbar, who lived in the same boarding house as Kakios, and mighta seen something he shouldn’ta. I’ve spoken to Headmaster Langlaren—he didn’t seem real excited to get Bituin’s gift, but Kakios’ remains convinced him there’s an accomplice on campus.”

“Master witten Oost said there won’t be any more attacks,” Bayan said.

“Which is a relief, let me tell ya. But someone had to hide Phokapolou’s body. Twice. The instructors and hexmagic students are on alert; the headmaster’s organized them into patrols. And Kiwani ain’t never to be left alone.”

“She’s alone now,” Tarin said. “She dinna want to come to lunch.”

Doc Theo frowned. “You-all go right now and drag her to the dining hall. The best defense she can have is an alert hex who stays with her.”

The hex left, tracing their path back to the girls’ barracks at a hungry run. Kiwani wasn’t excited about gaining four bodyguards. By the time the five of them reached the dining center, though, the meal was being cleared away, and they had to beg the cooks for leftovers.

A day passed, and night fell, bringing a chill, damp wind across Akkeraad from the Godsmaw. The instructors worked the students mercilessly, demanding long hours at each elemental arena. The students endured the cold and the wind to perform every elemental cast of every spell they knew, until Bayan’s hex nearly dropped from exhaustion.

That night, Bayan could barely keep his eyes open as he tried to answer an essay question for Instructor de Rood on which famous rebel was known for the quote, “The only antidote for duelists is steel,” and how that rebel perished. As he scribbled Helma de Rood’s name, a tapping at the window drew his attention. Kah fluttered outside, no doubt desperate to come in from the storm.

Bayan let the crow in, since Calder and Eward had both fallen asleep at their desks. Bayan shut the window firmly against the strong winds that wanted into the room as well. Kah flapped his wings and smoothed his askew feathers for a while on the edge of Bayan’s desk and croaked his own name in a low, pleased way.

“Shh,” Bayan warned the hexbird. “You be quiet and I’ll feed you some rye bread.”

Kah glared at him through a bright ebony eye.

“Well, I’d have some half-digested Akrestoi for you, but someone stole it. So we’ll both have to make do.” Bayan snorted. “I can’t focus on this stupid question anymore. I’ll get your bread now, and you eat it and don’t wake anyone up, deal?”

He reached over and slid open his desk drawer, fumbling for the heel of rye bread he’d saved for Kah. The bird, impatient as ever when it came to food, hopped onto the edge of the open drawer, and bobbed his head down among its contents.

“You’re not going to starve to death in the two heartbeats it takes me to fetch the bread, you crazy bird.” Bayan tried to fend off Kah’s flapping feathers as he reached for the bread at the back of the drawer.

Kah raised his head, holding the plain black pendant in his beak. The chain hung limply through the pendant’s metal hoop, ready to slip free into the drawer.

“Not that! Give it back!” Bayan experienced a rush of adrenaline as he snatched at the smooth black pendant that had caught the crow’s greedy eye.

Kah did not seem interested in giving back his prize. He flew high into the room, perching on a lamp hook. Bayan threw an abandoned sock at the creature, and Kah squawked around the pendant, flying toward a different perch: the top bunk. Bayan jumped up, pressing a foot against the edge of Calder’s desk, and leaped up onto the top bunk.

“Oi,” Calder said sleepily, fumbling for a textbook Bayan had nudged next to his head.

Bayan whipped the top blanket on Eward’s bed over Kah and leapt to the floor with the snared bird in his arms. Kah cawed, fluttered and snapped his beak while Bayan slipped a hand inside the blanket and felt around for the pendant. Sure enough, Kah had dropped it in his struggle for freedom.

Bayan palmed the trinket, then opened the blanket, and Kah stomped out. The bird paced back and forth, squawking and rustling his wing feathers, before flying to the window sill and demanding in no uncertain terms to be let back out into the storm.

“Fine.” Bayan cracked the window open. “Don’t steal my things next time.”

“
Kah
,” called the bird, tilting his head and eyeing Bayan with what must have been the most affronted avian expression the hexbird could manage. With a final click of his beak, the bird flew out into the rain and vanished into the night.

Bayan returned to his desk to put away the pendant, all the while grumbling about the ingratitude of hexbirds. As his hand opened to release the pendant into in the drawer, his thumb brushed a rough spot on its surface. He squinted, studying the pendant’s planes in the bright lamplight. The once-smooth black surface was marred by a deep beak impression, the edge of which had caught Bayan’s thumb.

This isn’t stone.

Bayan tried using his fingernails and even a small knife on the black substance coating the surface of the pendant, but it didn’t want to come off. He stood and held the pendant against the lamp’s flame, hoping the substance wasn’t flammable.

“Is that for homework?” Calder asked sleepily.

“No. The pendant from the assassin has some kind of coating on it. I’m seeing if I can get it off.”

Calder came over to see. After pressing his nails against the black substance and sniffing at it, he said, “I have an idea.”

Soon, white-hot sparks danced atop the pendant as it rested in an iron dish on Calder’s desk. Bayan waved away a cloud of pale smoke as Calder dabbed at the top of the pendant with the sock Bayan had earlier thrown at Kah. He cleaned off the last bits of the black coating before it cooled again to a hard substance.

Bayan eyed the sock, then Calder.

“
You
don’t have to wash it,” Calder said.

Bayan picked up the pendant and tilted it in the lamplight, examining the pattern revealed on its surface.

I’ve seen this before. How could that be?

A memory surfaced: he’d just killed a man, or thought he had. Surveyor Philo sat beside him, picking through jewelry. One of the rings had the same mark as the pendant. “The vagaries.”

“What?”

Bayan sat on his bed and explained how he recognized the sigil from Philo’s vagary ring.

Calder frowned. “If someone attacked you before you even got here, was Kiwani really the target during your duel?”

Bayan shook his head. “I lived in a swamp no one had ever heard of. They couldn’t have been after me.”

“Then what’s the connection?”

Bayan’s brain refused to function further. “I have no idea.” He flopped onto his mattress and scrubbed at his tired eyes.

But Philo might.

Bayan opened his eyes again and shuffled to his desk. “Bhattara, you wake me for this?” he griped, reaching for a fresh sheet of paper.

“What are you going to do?”

“I’m finally going to write a letter to my sponsor. Do you know when the next royal packet leaves for Akkeraad?”

To Surveyor Philo Sallas,

Greetings from Bayan Lualhati.

Thank you for the kind gifts and ducats you have been sending. I have made good use of them, except for the taffy. Calder eats it all each day that your packages arrive.

Philo smiled as he broke his fast at his broad dining table, Bayan’s letter in one hand and an oaten honey cake in the other, pleased that the boy had taken the time to write back, even if it had been over a year since he’d seen him. The lad had a fine hand for Waarden, too.

Our Elemental Duelist examinations are coming up. I think we are ready, but the instructors push us every day. I barely stay awake to do my homework in the evenings. Sometimes we run around the barracks barefoot in the frosty grass to wake up. If it’s snowed overnight, we still run, but it’s a challenge remembering where all the sharp rocks are. Thank Bhattara for chanters.

A friend stopped by to see my hexmate Kiwani recently. Surely you know the friend I mean; he had a bauble marked like the one you picked up at the Marghebellen border, though he wore his secretly. His visit didn’t end well, though. Kiwani was dying for him to leave after he made some pointed remarks; they cut her pretty deeply. But he won’t be saying anything more. I wonder if he has any more friends I should know about.

Looking forward to your reply.

Philo mentally distilled the letter’s hidden information over bacon-and-cream pastries and freshly-squeezed orange juice. As he daintily patted his mouth with a linen napkin at the end of his meal, a few more pieces of his great puzzle fell into place, and he realized that Lady Iyanu wasn’t the lock he sought, after all. Her daughter Kiwani was.
I’ve been wrong all along
.
Lord Eshkin isn’t conducting the Aklaa steel plot. He’s its victim! All that posturing was borne of fear for his daughter’s life. I was getting too close. His blackmailers must have acted to punish him—thank sints the assassin failed.

Philo sat up straight as a new thought followed his epiphany. Lord Eshkin’s blackmailer would only feel free to act against Kiwani if he thought he could continue without Lord Eshkin’s help.
They must be nearing completion of their plan. And I have no idea what it is. But now that Kiwani is safe, I think I can finally learn the truth.

Philo put on his best black wig, the one with the pearls, and threw a long black stole over his silk tunic before calling for his carriage. As he arrived at his destination, Philo thanked Nic and bade him wait in the drive, as there was a good chance he’d be exiting both soon and with haste.

Nic, phlegmatic as usual, merely nodded and adjusted the fine iron sword on his belt.

Philo descended from the carriage and climbed the stairs to the broad portico. He gave the thick bell cord a gentle pull and waited. When the butler opened the door, Philo simply told him, “I’ve been summoned.”

The butler led the way to an upstairs parlor, where Lord Eshkin and his wife sat on cozy padded chairs near a small hearth, each holding a glass of pale blue wine.

Lord Eshkin stood at once, glaring. “What are you doing here?”

The butler gave Philo an affronted look. “He said he was summoned, my lord.”

“I didn’t summon you!”

“No. Kiwani did.” He held up Bayan’s letter. “I’ve received word of her adventure, and I believe we have much to discuss.”

Eshkin paused, his expression angry and reluctant, but he dismissed the butler. To Philo, he merely said, “Sit.”

Philo took a spot in a third chair, which directly faced the fireplace. Holding Bayan’s letter, he studied it for a moment before giving his employer a disappointed look.

“I wish you had trusted me with this, Wateyo. As I see it, my questing for the truth of the steel ring led directly to the attack on Kiwani. For that, I am sorry, but I cannot apologize for doing what my emperor demands of me.”

“He has tasked you with investigating the ring, then.”

“Yes.”

Wateyo’s shoulders slumped. “We have doomed ourselves. At the crux of the matter, it comes to the choice we made to protect our daughter rather than the empire. Yet, there was no other choice to make. The empire is as strong now as it has ever been. Surely it can withstand one more plot. But the matter remains that I have turned against my emperor, and my friend. It was an impossible choice, and one I wish I’d never been forced to make.”

“There is yet a chance for redemption. Tell me what you know, everything you know, about those who contacted you. The ring, the lost crime reports, all of it. I have reason to believe they’re nearing the final part of whatever plan they have. Do you know their goal?”

Iyanu set down her wineglass. “Anuq never told us anything except what we were to give him: information in my case—regarding the palace interior, scheduling, that sort of thing—and disinformation through the Ministry of Ways.”