Thief of Light (7 page)

For the first month, he’d maintained a vast, spectral presence, dark and eyeless beneath a hooded cloak, the way he’d first manifested before her. She’d been so proud then, so armored in her power as the Technomage Primus of Sybaris. At her core, she’d always despise the Magick she wished to master. She thought if she could measure it, dismantle it and put it back together, it would be hers to wield as a weapon. Foolish woman.

His mouth twisted with satisfaction. He’d taught her a little since then, though she was remarkably stubborn, the habits of command deeply ingrained. Now she knew if she patronized him, in even the most oblique way, unimaginable pain arrived right on the heels of her indiscretion. But though the Primus had grown wary of his temper, she was still utterly convinced of her own superiority.

Deep in thought, he walked across his study and pushed aside a set of bookcases. It wasn’t like him to entertain doubts, but he wondered if he should recalculate. Perhaps he’d been careless, allowing her to see the body he wore, but manifesting as a dark god grew tiring after a time, and he’d slipped, grown lazy. Not that it mattered, of course, because the Primus was as good as dead. He passed a hand over the small door he’d revealed and the runes on its surface twisted into being, glowing a vicious shade of acid green, spiced with the clotted reek of old blood.

It was a powerful spell, its intricate coils a trap for a hungry demon. Creating the Doorkeeper had cost the Necromancer the lives of a small, dusky-skinned child and a blue, aquatic creature called a seelie, and he himself had been drained, weak and pale for a day after. The child was no matter—slum dwellers bred fast. Sacrificing the seelie had been the true price.

They were so rare, the seelies of Caracole, their deaths inexpressibly sweet to his palate. His loins clenched as he thought of it, the sensation like the sexual fervor he dimly remembered, but—oh gods!—infinitely better.

“Silly as a seelie.” That’s what the city folk said of the stupid or the slow, the little creatures long faded to the status of legend, the stuff of old, half-forgotten stories.

But they weren’t myth; they were oh-so-delightfully real.

The Necromancer nodded pleasantly at the Doorkeeper’s horned face, even as it snarled and bared its fangs. “A good evening to you too,” he murmured, starting down the long stairs.

The Technomage was seated at her console, but her head jerked around as the door opened and her stylus clattered to the desk. The Necromancer smiled. “Good evening, my dear,” he said, because he knew it galled her to be so addressed.

“I got another one,” she said curtly, rising to pull the cover off a large tank at the far end of the long room. “Finally.”

Saliva pooled in his mouth and it was a moment before he could speak. It had been so long. “You mean Nasake got it.”

“No.” Something sparked in her rather prominent blue gray eyes. “I was bored, so I made a number of modifications to your trap. All Nasake did was pull it up from the canal. He’s as dumb as a beast, that man. I don’t know why you keep him on.”

“Blind loyalty is useful,” said the Necromancer absently, trailing a finger over the glass of the tank.

The seelie within recoiled, its whiskers vibrating with terror, and bubbles clung to its long blue fur as it twisted away. You couldn’t say seelies were pretty, not by any stretch of the imagination, but they had their own bug-eyed, whiskery charm. With their long tubelike snouts and webbed fingers and toes, they were perfectly adapted for life underwater. The Necromancer had a seelie-fur rug next to his bed. He relished the luxury of it under his bare soles first thing in the morning. There was something . . .
visceral
. . . about his connection with the half a dozen creatures who’d died to make it.

Gods, he really must take care to savor this one, not gulp it down like a raw apprentice with his first blood. He pulled his gaze away to study the diagram revolving slowly on the gray screen, and his brows rose. “Ingenious.”

The Scientist’s breast expanded under her white coat. The garment was beginning to look more than a little gray and limp, but the numeral one embroidered on the collar was still crisp and dark. “Not difficult,” she said, “given your trap wasn’t a very sophisticated apparatus to begin with.”

After a split second, she realized what had come out of her foolish mouth and froze, waiting for her punishment. Really, she was doing very well. Progress.

“No offense taken,” said the Necromancer, waving a hand. “In fact, I think a reward is in order. You deserve a name.”

Her lips thinned. “I already have one.”

“A number is not a name.”

“It’s all Science gives us. Perfectly sufficient.”

“In a Technomage Tower perhaps, but not in the real world. Let me think . . .” Out of the corner of his eye, he watched the seelie cast back and forth, back and forth, while he pretended to consider.
No escape, little one. You’re mine
.

“I knew a whore once,” he said at last. “She was called Dotty, and she was a good whore.” Actually, she had been. She’d been kind to a hungry little boy, long ago, in a different life.

“Well, Dotty, what else have you been doing?”

He thought he heard the Technomage’s teeth click together. Certainly, her jaw bunched.

“I’ve done some calculations. I need to tell you . . .” The pause was so fractional, he barely caught it. His interest sharpened. “. . . something.”

The Necromancer smiled. “You’re worried I won’t like it. Your concern does you credit.” Spreading his robes, he seated himself on the Technomage’s chair. “Go ahead, Dotty. Don’t keep me in suspense.”

The low heels of her sensible shoes clattering on the flagged floor, she strode back to her console and tapped a key. Columns of figures scrolled across the screen. His eyes aching, the Necromancer averted his gaze. His vision wasn’t as sharp as it used to be.

The Technomage opened and closed her mouth. Then she said, “You have to stop killing seelies.”

“You,” said Erik, snagging Florien’s collar as the last of the dancers trotted toward the water stairs in a drift of perfume and tired chatter. “With me.”

Florien looked from the fragile-seeming skiff rocking in the inky waters of the canal to Erik’s face and back again. He scowled. “Kin we walk?”

“No. This is quicker.” Erik glanced up at the big red moon called the Brother, high in the night sky. “It’s late and I have things to do tomorrow.”

A puzzle to solve and a woman to pursue. Were They toying with him, the gods? It wouldn’t surprise him, not after last night. He’d been so perilously close to the edge, he’d very nearly dared Them to get it fucking over with and kill him. A life for a life.

The Sister, nearly full and silver blue, hung just above the rooftops, her pale glow softening the harsh martial light of the Brother. The Sibling Moons, Palimpsestians called them. The other main source of light was the single Technomage Tower near the spaceport, glowing like a blunt needle on the mainland, miles away. The tiny shape of a flitter buzzed across it like a mechanical insect as he watched. Interesting. Queen Sikara must be a canny politician to hold the Scientists to the one Tower. On Sybaris, where Florien came from, the Technomages were all powerful.

The combined moonslight gave shadows a strange blurred double edge and did extraordinary things to the already exotic architecture of the Royal Theater. Erik tilted his head back to stare up at it. Gods, it was an edifice, a monument to elegant excess, story after story climbing up to bulk against the star-spangled sky. For all the world like a towering layer cake.

Erik liked it. He liked the extravagance of Caracole, and he rather suspected Caracole approved wholeheartedly of the Unearthly Opera. He’d have to see about extending the run.

“Hold on tight,” he said, scooping up the boy with one arm.

Florien cursed, but his fingers crooked into claws on Erik’s forearm, all save the smallest finger on one hand. The burly skiffwoman roused herself from a doze in the stern and rose, balancing easily as the narrow craft bobbed. She stretched, working the kinks from her back, and her dark eyes flickered over Erik. She grinned, showing a missing tooth. “Where to, pretty master?”

With an effort, Erik returned the smile, passing the boy over as she reached out a calloused hand to steady his descent. Florien subsided with a gasp and fell silent, but his eyes were everywhere. Alley cat. Erik suppressed a sigh as he settled himself, his weight making the skiff dance in the water.

When he gave the woman the address of the boarding house where the Company was accommodated, she grunted and pushed off into the current. “Which way?”

“Pardon?”

“You wanta go by the Meltin’ Pot?”

“What’s that?”

The skiffwoman’s remaining teeth shone as she guided the craft beneath a graceful humpbacked bridge. “Market, taverns, doxy houses,” she said. “Rough as guts. Still kickin’.” She glanced up at the Sibling Moons. “Even now.”

“Yah.” Florien sat up straight.

The water slid by, dark silk brushing the hull. A cool breeze ruffled Erik’s hair, moist and salt-laden. With it came the familiar deep green smell of massive vegetation, but now it was laced with the faintest odor of rot, like a scummy pool. Foul. Grimacing, he cursed his sensitive nose, not for the first time.

“Why not?” he said. “And do you know a place called The Garden?”

“Yeah.” The skiffwoman glanced from Florien to Erik and back again. “On the Leaf of Pleasures.”

“Take us past it.”

The woman cocked a brow. “That’ll be extra. ’Nother half-cred.”

“Thet’s cheatin’.” The lad glared. “Twice t’ goin’ rate.”

She chuckled. “Not against the tide, it’s not.”

As they slipped beneath another bridge, the ornate buildings began to give way to humbler structures. The skiffwoman poled them steadily toward a mass of lights that threw long flares across the night-dark water. New smells assaulted Erik’s nose—stale beer, unwashed humanity, grilled meat. The buzz of noise became a roaring hum, underpinned with the occasional shriek and crash, someone playing a jig—badly.

Dark silhouettes moved across arched bridges or clustered outside brightly lit buildings that were clearly taverns. Skiffs darted across the water like so many improbable insects.

The lights blanched the boy’s fascinated face to the white of bone. “Kin we stop?”

Behind them, a man’s voice bellowed a curse, cut off by an almighty splash. A woman screamed a string of imprecations.

“No, we cannot,” said Erik sternly, but he made a mental note. Later. Alone. He turned his head to hide his grin as the din receded in their wake.

“The Garden,” grunted the skiffwoman, indicating with her chin.

Erik stared ahead, over the prow of the little craft, his eyes widening. Lord’s balls, but that was pretty. So that’s where she was. It figured. Low in his belly, everything went tight and hot.

The moonslight illuminated the roofline of a wide, two-story building, the eaves tilting up at the corners in graceful, somehow feminine curves. It was set a little back from the canal, surrounded by gardens. He could see the curve of a flagged path lined with poles bearing fat orange lanterns like ripe manda fruits, each with its strange double shadow stretching behind it. Pale blossoms gleamed, silvery fronds shimmering in a dance beneath the moons. Exquisite perfumes drifted across the water and he sniffed appreciatively.

“Looks expensive.”

“Yeah,” grunted the skiffwoman. “ ’Tis.”

Prue’s gown had been plain, but the fabric had had the sheen of the best silk, the upper curve of her sweet breast gleaming like pale honey against the black.

Other lights came into view, glowing through the foliage, warm and welcoming. Smaller pavilions, about half a dozen of them. Water gurgled in the canal, a quiet counterpoint to his thoughts.

He’d spent all his adult life practicing the most severe self-discipline imaginable, and tonight, he’d ruined it all, destroyed everything, the effort of all those years. So easily, so wantonly, and for no reason he could discern. The Voice had surged out of him like a force of nature. He’d had no warning, not the slightest idea.

And if that wasn’t enough to have him reeling, Prue McGuire had actually
resisted
. Godsdammit, how was it even possible? The shock of that mangled half-sentence on her lips had brought him to his senses faster than a dash of icy water.

Two completely unprecedented events.

Which left him with a number of possibilities.

Was it some kind of dreadful game and he a mere toy for the amusement of the deities? Had the Great Lady overridden his choice and taken both blessing and curse after all?

But that didn’t seem likely. The gods had some purpose in mind for him, he believed that absolutely. He’d waited all his adult life for it. The Lady might be terrible in Her justice, but She wouldn’t play him false. He’d still entranced the entire Court of Caracole with the Voice. Nothing unusual about that, it happened every night he sang.