Thief of Light (49 page)

“Well done,” said the Technomage, frowning down at her transplas tablet. She made an annotation.

Prue gurgled.

“Here, I’ll take that.” The other woman removed the thick leather strap from between Prue’s teeth. “Would you like some water?”

Her jaw aching, her mouth too parched to form words, Prue made a noise of assent.

Establishing the benchmarks hadn’t been as bad as she’d feared, but the first battery of real tests had ratcheted up her discomfort by inexorable degrees—building from subtle hurt to bright pain to bone-melting agony. The worst part was that even if her hands had been free, there was nothing to stroke or soothe on the outside. Every cell, every organ and vessel deep inside her body ached with the abuse.

The straw made an obscene slurping noise in the bottom of the cup.

The brutal labor she’d endured to birth Katrin was nothing in comparison. For the Sister’s sake, after this she’d be able to pump out one babe after another and laugh while she did it. With cruel clarity, her imagination painted a picture of Erik’s face as she laid his child in his arms, Katrin’s fond smile as she stroked the baby’s plump cheek. Prue hadn’t shed a single tear, but suddenly, her face was wet. Gods, she was a fool! Happiness had been within her grasp, and she hadn’t had the guts to reach for it.
Gone, all gone
. She swallowed a hiccup-ping sob. She’d never see either of them again.

“Finished?” The Technomage removed the cup. “Sleep now while I tabulate the data.” She bent to work some mechanism under the chair. With a creak, the back tilted and the foot rose until Prue lay flat. The relief was exquisite.

“Sleep?” she croaked. “You must be . . . joking.”

“No.” The Technomage looked up from her transplas notes. “You need to rest. The initial readings seem to confirm my hypothesis. You generate some kind of field. The question is whether it’s reflective, absorbing or simply a barrier. I need to do a triangulation.”

Prue’s eyelids slid down. She levered them open again. “You mean . . . three . . . more times?
Three?
”

The Technomage Primus patted her on the knee. “No, only two. The first is complete.”

“Won’t . . . live . . .” Her tongue banged around in her mouth, numb and clumsy. “. . . through another, let . . . alone . . .” With a heroic effort, Prue peered through her lashes. The beamed ceiling blurred and swung. “Water . . . what was . . . ?”

“Nothing sinister. Just a sedative.”

“Oh,” mumbled Prue. “That’s all right then.” A black cottony wave swept over her, drowning the sound of her hollow laughter.

“Again,” said Bartelm. “And cut the volume. Barge in bellowing like that and you won’t need a doorbell.”

Erik clenched his fists, concentrating fiercely. Gathering the Voice, he opened his mouth to—

“Clear your mind first,” said a creaky old voice from a cocoon of blankets huddled in a big chair. “You’re trying too hard.” Calmly, Purist Nori sipped the last of the tisane from the cup cradled in her gnarled fingers.

“I have to try,” Erik snapped. “If I don’t, Prue will die. Fuck, for all I know she’s—”

With surprising strength, the old woman flung the cup at his head.

Between one breath and the next, Erik’s hand flashed up and the cup stalled in midair as if it had been glued there. He was so astonished, his mouth fell open and the cup lurched toward the floor.

“Keep it there!” snapped Nori.

Instinctively, Erik did . . .
something
. . . and the cup steadied, hovering three feet above the flagstones.

He heard Bartelm’s gusty sigh, but he didn’t dare take his eye from the cup.

“For once, Nori, could we do something the orthodox way?” asked the wizard plaintively. “It usually works, that’s why it’s
orthodox
.”

“The boy’s right,” said Nori absently. “No time.” She raised her voice. “Tell me what you see, Erik.”

“A cup.” Sweat gathered on his brow, dripped into his eyes.

“Unfocus your eyes. Squint if you have to.”

“Can’t . . . too much.” The cup dropped, shattering with a delicate tinkle. Erik stared at it, fumbling his way to a chair. He sat with a thump. Gods, he ached as if he’d hoisted a full-grown milkbeast over his head.

“Ah well.” Nori shrugged her bony shoulders. “Surprise only works once.”

“I saw . . .” Erik wet his lips. “I thought I saw . . . lines, a shimmer. Like the time before. I don’t know.” He tugged at his hair. “Something.”

The two old Purists exchanged a glance. “Orthodoxy, hmm?” said Nori with a twinkle.

Bartelm cleared his throat. “We think your medium is the air, Erik. After all, it’s what you do every time you sing—shape the air to produce music.”

“But there are other ways, not so loud.” Nori leaned forward, her rheumy eyes glittering in their nest of wrinkles. “Especially if you can
see
the flows. Here.” With a small huff of effort she bent to scoop up a small piece of china from the floor near her feet. “Try this.”

Automatically, Erik caught it one-handed and placed it on the table. He regarded it dubiously.

Half an hour later, he was still glaring at the fucking thing, urgency crawling under his skin, an itch he couldn’t scratch. He’d moved the shard a whole quarter of an inch sideways. His head pounded. “Give me a minute.” He strode out the door into the welcome cool of night, seething.

The dark air was a soft caress on his skin, light spilling from the kitchen windows and across the path. The graceful rooflines of The Garden’s pavilions were silhouetted against the racing clouds, the Sibling Moons shining high in the sky. It had to be past three in the morning. Despite himself, Erik yawned. Rose and a couple of the boys had insisted on going to scout out the Leaf of Nobility, but they’d returned empty-handed and crestfallen. He’d sent them to bed, and sensibly, they’d gone.

Gods, where was Prue? Was she waiting for him even now, every minute that passed without rescue sapping her confidence, her will to survive?
Lord and Lady, don’t punish her for my sins. I can pay all by myself.
He bit his lip until he drew blood.

Walker though . . . There was still Walker and the assassin. A sweet wind swirled by, bearing the heavy purple scent of dark roses. Erik’s nostrils flared in appreciation.

He blinked.
Purple?
Well, hell.

Eddies of air, limned in a deep burgundy violet, drifted by, flirting with the moonslight. Deliberately, Erik blurred his vision, the way the Purists had taught him. The color intensified, marking the passage of the light breeze.

Right.

With infinite caution, he raised his arm and pointed at a leaf that lay on the path, uneasily conscious he must look like a complete idiot.
You
, he thought fiercely.
Now
.

The leaf quivered. Then it rose, floating upward in a gentle spiral, the way leaves did. Erik squinted through his lashes.
Ah
.

The faintest of glimmers supported the leaf, so nearly transparent that if he moved his head, even slightly, it disappeared.

Experimentally, he made a tugging motion with his fingers. The leaf jerked toward him as if on an invisible string. Erik smiled with grim satisfaction. Well, a string that was visible to
him
, a tether made of air.

Fine. He could do this, he could do anything—for Prue. Narrowing his gaze, he concentrated on focusing his will.

The leaf lurched and fluttered down to the path. Shit!

Shuffling footsteps, the slow tap-tap of a cane. “You can’t force it, son,” said Purist Nori from behind him. “Magick is the gods’ gift. It comes from the heart, not the intellect.”

Erik turned to stare down into her face. “You mean it’s instinctive?”

The old woman folded her knotted hands on the head of her cane and shrugged.

“In essence.” Purist Bartelm came to stand at her shoulder. “Mind you, that’s not permission to throw discipline out the window. Nor scholarship.”

A heavy wooden table revolving in the air, a miscellany of objects circling above his head like crazed planets. The single silver cuff coming to rest against the corpsebird’s neck, touching that horrible scrawny skin . . . Remembering it, the hair stood up on the back of his neck. For a few moments there, he hadn’t been completely sane, the power of his emotions reducing him to a bundle of knee-jerk reactions, all of the most primitive sort. He’d no longer been a man, but a creature made of Magick.

Abruptly, he couldn’t wait to be gone, to be
doing
. “Then I’m as ready as I’ll ever be,” he said. “If I’m angry enough, it . . . the power . . . will come.” It felt so patently ridiculous, he couldn’t say the word out loud.
Magick.

“That’s not quite what we meant,” said Bartelm immediately, but Nori just shrugged again.

From out of the darkness, a soft, deep voice said, “I have the assassin.”

Three heads jerked around.

Soundlessly, Walker stepped from the shadows into the light. There’d been no footfall, no sense of movement, nothing to indicate his presence. Gods, the man was uncanny. His slashing cheekbones were flushed, his clean-cut mouth curved in a cruel smile. “It took some doing, but Mehcredi’s safe in my House of Swords.”

Nori cackled. Walker said nothing.

Erik took a pace forward. “She talked?”

“Yes.” Again that hunter’s smile. But then his dark brows drew together. “She didn’t know much. She was contacted by a man wearing the livery of an upper-class servant and directed to come here to The Garden.”

“Here?” Bartelm’s eyes widened.

“To Clouds and Rain. Where she met with her employer. She thinks it was a man, but he manifested as a black cloud.”

“Dark Arts,” murmured Bartelm.

Walker ignored him. “He gave no reason, but he wanted Erik dead. The fee was twenty credits, reduced to fifteen after the fuckup with Dai. The man came to Mehcredi a second time in a dream. At both meetings he hurt her in order to ensure her obedience.” An infinitesimal pause. “Also for the pleasure of her pain.”

Fuck! Erik’s pulse boomed in his ears like a mighty, rushing wind. What would such a man do to Prue, with her bright-eyed courage and her sharp tongue? He clenched his fists so hard his nails dug into his palms. Shit, what was the bastard doing to her
right now
?

“Why—?” He had to stop to moisten his lips. “Why did she take Prue? And
how
?”

“Mehcredi hired two thugs, but you weren’t there and they couldn’t find you, not in time. When Prue wouldn’t tell them where you were, the assassin panicked. She decided Prue was better than nothing.” A flash in his dark eyes. “She fought the way I’d taught her, but the assassin used a stupefying drug.”

Erik’s eyes stung. She’d refused to give him up? She’d tried to protect
him
? Ah, gods!

“You have the woman secure? Under guard?” asked Bartelm.

“Yes.” Walker bared his teeth. “She’s mine to do with as I will. Don’t worry, she’ll pay for what she did to Dai.”

The old man took Nori’s arm to usher her back into the building. “Come,” he said over his shoulder. “We need all the details.”

The moment they’d taken the first few steps, Erik strode away toward the water stairs, breaking first into a trot and then a run. Walker’s skiff bobbed gently in the water, a pale, slender shape, double shadowed. The canal lay deserted, silent and mysterious, the water a black, shifting expanse, relieved only by the shivering glint of wavelets caressed by the moonslight. It smelled cool and briny, the sea breeze playing with Erik’s hair.

Stepping into the little craft, he unhitched the tie rope and shoved off. The skiff rocked alarmingly when he picked up the pole, but he managed the first couple of strokes without tipping himself into the water. As the current carried him around the bend, he thought he saw Walker’s lithe figure, standing, hands on hips at the top of the water stairs. His body was outlined against the martial glow of the Brother, flaring red as it dipped toward the horizon.