Stolen Compass (The Painter Mage Book 4) (8 page)

I veered toward the Rooster. Tom hadn’t been there last night, but hopefully he’d returned by now. I had questions that needed answering, and it was time for him to help.

T
he parking lot
of the Rooster looked more crowded than I’d ever seen it before. By that, I meant that there were at least five cars parked in the lot. I rolled in and parked next to an older white Chevy—the one car that I recognized—and hurried inside. After my time in Conlin and the frequency with which I visited the Rooster, I expected to recognize a few more cars, but none looked familiar.

As I suspected after seeing the Chevy, Jakes sat at the counter working over a heaping plate of eggs and toast. I glanced at the others in the diner and saw a booth with two older kids sitting next to each other playing on their phones, an elderly couple eating breakfast silently, a man by himself in the back corner booth, and the same woman from the night before. She made a point of looking down at the table as I came in.

Jakes twisted and nodded to me as I approached. “Morris,” he said between bites. “Figured you’d be out searching for the item.”

It was a measure of how frustrated I was feeling that I didn’t manage some smart-ass response. “I’m trying. Did you know that the compass atop Settler Hill was stolen?”

Jakes set his fork down and turned around to me slowly. “Say that again?”

“Yeah. The monument atop the hill, that big old compass, was stolen. All the way down to the bolts. Nothing but the slab of concrete sitting in the ground now. Don’t know when.” I watched Jakes as I spoke. He kept his face composed, but the muscles along his jaw tensed slightly. “You didn’t know, did you?”

“When did it happen?”

“Taylor discovered it missing when she went to the top of Settler Hill last night. I thought at first it might have happened while the doorway was open. Devan and I thought something else got through, but you said it wasn’t possible.”

“We would have known,” Jakes said. “Even shielded as he was, we still would have known if something crossed.” He turned forward in his chair and stared at his hands. His brow knitted slightly, and he let out a few soft panting breaths.

“Yeah, that’s what Devan and I kinda figured. We thought maybe something came through another doorway while we were focused on the”—I glanced around the diner and lowered my voice, not really certain who might be listening in here—“on the Trelking, so we went out to the barn. Something came through, but not when the Trelking crossed. This was before.”

Jakes glanced over at me. “That gateway was destroyed with Adazi, Morris.”

“Apparently, not completely.” Jakes still didn’t react. Here I thought the shifters knew everything around Conlin, but maybe Jakes didn’t. “Whatever came through destroyed it, though. Won’t work to cross back over. Devan is looking into the other doorway we know about since it can’t be opened from the other side.”

His eyes twitched, and I swear he started to shift before catching himself and taking a deep breath. “That is the one you went through?”

“You knew that?”

“We know when the doorways we guard are used. We’re… tied to them in a way.”

That answered a little of the question that I had, though I suspected there was much more to it than what Jakes let on. “And you didn’t detect any of the other doorways around town being opened?”

Jakes shook his head. “We can’t oversee all the doorways, Morris. There are more of them than there are of us. Even around Conlin, there might be crossings we don’t know about, that have been lost to us. It’s why some cross in spite of us watching.”

Like me. And like the Nizashi. They would have had to sneak past whatever protections the shifters placed on the gates, as well. “So you knew when I returned.”

“The moment the doorway opened.”

“And you knew that I’d crossed over the first time?”

“The Elder warned it might happen.”

I froze. “Wait. You’re saying my father suspected that I would cross the Threshold, and that he told you—or more likely, your father—
before
he disappeared?”

Jakes tapped the counter and then pointed toward the door. “Not here.”

“I’m trying to find Tom to ask him a few questions.”

“You won’t find him here. He’s resting.”

I leaned over as if to peer into the back of the kitchen, but I couldn’t see anything. If Tom wasn’t here, then the reason I had come to the Rooster was basically shot, and I was only wasting time. I turned and headed back out of the diner, passing the kids sitting at the table tapping away on their phones. They didn’t look up at me. The woman from the other night made a point of not looking, almost as if trying to hide the fact that she was watching me. I paused to look at her out of the corner of my eye before reaching the door and pushing it open.

The gray sky left the day cool, and a northerly breeze gusted across the parking lot, slapping against my bare skin. Like last night, I should have grabbed a coat. My coat had other benefits, as well. I’d taken the time to sew a few patterns into it. Mostly protective works that would keep me out of most shit storms, but there were a few charms that I’d let Devan weave into it, too. I’d gotten away from wearing it while in Conlin. On the other side of the Threshold, I wore the coat most of the time. Over here, I hadn’t found the same sense of urgency, but after everything we’d been through, maybe that was a mistake.

Jakes followed me out of the diner, and I turned to him when I reached my truck. “So what is it that you didn’t want anyone inside to hear?”

Better to get right to the point given the timeline we were working with.

I could detect Jakes working his magic with as a distinct change to the air. The breeze suddenly stopped, falling still and leaving me with a muted sense. Had he walled us in?

Jakes’s muscular arms crossed over his chest, straining at his uniform. Aviator sunglasses hung from the left chest pocket. He wore a holstered gun and a flashlight, looking like any other cop I’d ever seen. I wondered how much of his uniform was real and how much he’d simply shifted into place.

“You keep talking about the Elder as if he is like any other painter from that school of yours,” Jakes said.

“Not my school,” I said. “They tossed me out.”

“Yes, and you are better for it. With everything that you know of the Elder, don’t you think that he planned much of this? Do you not think it’s possible that he intended for you to make the crossing?”

I considered Jakes for a long moment before answering. “You cared about your father?” It was a dangerous question, considering how his father died, but I needed to make a point.

“My father was a powerful man.”

“That’s no answer.”

“It was no kind of question.”

I smiled tightly. “Well, my father was also a powerful man. That was never a secret to me. Even while living here, I knew about his painting ability and how he had pulled magic and power that other kids’ fathers couldn’t. It was hard for me knowing that secret, knowing that I was different from other kids, that it was
good
that I was different, even if they never understood.”

Jakes stood and watched, letting me unload on him.

“When we lost my mother and went to Arcanus, I realized how little I knew of my father. Everyone there treated him like some sort of celebrity. They
knew
him in ways that I did not. They knew him as the Elder, as this Master of Arcanus. In the time we were in Arcanus, I got to know him better than I ever had, and I finally started to feel settled. I was still different, but not in the same way. I’m not an artist, not like painters like Taylor. You’ve seen some of the patterns she can make. Hell, you’ve seen some of her drawings. That alone tells you all that you need about her abilities. I can’t do anything quite like that. While my father was in Arcanus, I was shielded somewhat. I was the Elder’s son. When he disappeared, that stopped. The other Masters thought him dead, but never told me why. I still don’t know why they believed he’d died. I was the only one who didn’t believe it. He’d left me with a few items; the key to your father’s shed for one, so how could he have died? What I thought stopped mattering. The teaching started to change—I was only a tagger, after all, with no real prospect of ever becoming anything more. And finally, I got fed up and left and returned here where I tripped the doorway across the Threshold and the Trelking claimed me. I spent ten hellish years on that side, Jakes. Ten years seeing unimaginable things. And now you’re suggesting that my father might have
planned
it? What sort of sick son of a bitch does that?”

Jakes’s face didn’t really change. “Are you finished?”

I shrugged. It felt good to unload some of that. Devan knew most of it, but I tried not to burden her too much with my issues with my father. She had her own problems that we worked through. She’d figured out most of my stuff over the time we’d known each other, just as I started to figure out some of the crap she dealt with regarding her father the longer we knew each other.

“Yeah, I’m finished.”

“You missed my point,” Jakes said.

“What was it? That I should be thankful that my father chose to send me across the Threshold and tie me to the Trelking?”

“You survived, didn’t you?”

“Not because of anything he did.”

Jakes shook his head. “No. You learned on your own. He provided the background you needed—and seeing some of the painting that I have from you, I know he taught you something, and more than you admit—and then released you into the world to learn on your own, as a father should do. As my father did. You would never have learned what you needed to learn had he been there and walked you through it. You’ve said yourself that you could not have learned what you needed while in Arcanus.” He let the words hang in the air a moment. “Would you really change anything?”

I laughed at the audacity of his comment but couldn’t really come up with an argument against it. “Maybe the Trelking’s sentence. You know I owe nine and ninety years?”

“You’ll never live long enough to serve that sentence, anyway.”

I stared at him in shock—painters lived longer lives than your average person, so what he said could be taken as unnecessarily mean—before realizing that Jakes had made a joke. An honest to goodness joke. The gods must be dreaming for him to loosen up like that. “That’s what I figured. And if I ever manage to face the Druist Mage as he intends, I won’t live long enough for it to matter.” Jakes nodded, all joking gone. “What is this all about? Why put this around us?” I asked, waving my hand around toward where I suspected the magical protection must be in place that sealed us inside.

“Because of your father. You keep thinking of him as a painter, but you need to think differently. He was—maybe still is—something more than that.”

I looked over at the Rooster. I didn’t need to attempt a pattern to know that it would fail here, stopped by the protections placed around the diner by my father, but Jakes’s magic still worked. “Clearly.”

“No. I don’t think that you fully understand. We’ve spoken of the Protariat—”

“You’ve spoken of it, not me. I still don’t have any clue what that is.”

“They are the reason this world remains unharmed by the powers on the other side of the Threshold. They are the reason those without magic can sleep safely at night without fearing the onslaught of an attack they do not have the capacity to understand.”

“You said you weren’t going to explain the Protariat to me. What changed your mind?”

“Because you need to know what this is all about. With the Trelking’s arrival, you’re being drawn in, whether you choose to or not.”

“Figures,” I mumbled. I get dragged into so many things I don’t want to do. “My father was part of it, wasn’t he?”

Jakes nodded. “As was my father.”

“Who else? You said the Trelking—”

“The Trelking is well known to be a member of the Protariat. The others are less well known. I cannot say with certainty.”

I frowned, looking all around me. The Rooster was isolated from other parts of Conlin, sitting near the edge of town. Tall oak trees grew around it, none with their leaves yet changed, and blocked surrounding buildings from view. There was the diner and the parking lot with the few cars around, but nothing else. We were by ourselves.

I thought of the magical beings that might know of the Protariat, that might either be a part of it or be working against it. That the Trelking was a part of it didn’t surprise me. That was sort of what he was about. Not for altruistic reasons, but they served the same end game. If he managed to keep and control power, he would keep that power away from the Threshold. And now I understood why Jakes wouldn’t contest him, why he hadn’t been willing to risk going against the Trelking when the Nizashi were in Conlin.

“What of the Druist Mage?” I asked.

Jakes shook his head. “His power is relatively new. I do not know.”

“I thought that there weren’t new powers on that side. They only go from person to person.” Which made me wonder who—or what—had lost power so that the Druist Mage could acquire it.

Jakes nodded. “It’s not only on that side.”

“What are you playing at here, Jakes?”

“Your father’s absence on this side creates challenges.”

“What kinds of challenges?” Already, I didn’t like the way this conversation was turning.

“You have seen that this town is more than it appears.”

“No shit.”

Jakes shot me a hard look. “Just as the Trelking provides balance on the other side of the Threshold, the Elder provided a certain balance to this side.”

“And the shifters? Don’t you do anything?”

“Do not downplay the role my people play in this, Morris. You are too new to fully understand.”

I sighed. “And why tell me this now? You think my father might be gone, but there’s more to it, isn’t there?”

“Balance requires strength on both sides. When one side sits with greater strength, balance is unsettled.”

“You mean the Trelking.”

“Him. And others like him.”

“So the compass?”

“I don’t claim to know its purpose, but you know that everything in Conlin has some purpose. The Elder saw to that.”

“And now that he’s gone, at least now that you
think
he’s completely gone, you think balance must be restored?”