All the Paths of Shadow (11 page)

Meralda blinked. “Shingvere?”

“You heard me, lass. It’s a hard thing to say, and a hard thing to hear, but hear it you must, and heed it you must. Kill him. Mercy would be wasted. Hesitation will be fatal. Kill him quick. You won’t get two chances.” And then the fat Eryan turned and was through the doors and gone. Meralda barely had time to utter the word of leaving, and then the doors were shut.

Meralda stared after him, and it was a long time before she was able to pick up her pencil and resume work on her shadow moving spell.

Shingvere sauntered past the Bellringers with a quick word and the offer of a penny-stick to each. Both declined, and both kept their eyes alert and on the Hall, which meant neither saw the bulge under the front of the Eryan wizard’s robe or noticed the odd gait he took down the stairs.

At the foot of the west stair, Shingvere stopped, looked furtively about, and hitched at his robes when the Red Guards at the Burnt Door looked away. “That’s better,” he muttered. Then he found a grin and managed to walk without hopping all the way through the west wing, out the west doors, and half a block down Palace Way to Fromarch’s plain black carriage.

The curbside carriage door opened, and Shingvere darted inside.

Fromarch scowled at him through a thick fog of purple pipe smoke. “Well,” he said, knocking twice on the carriage with his knuckles. “Did you get it?”

Shingvere grinned. “You know I did,” he said, unfastening the front of his robe and reaching inside. “Walked right up to it and stuck it in my britches. Walked right out, too. No wonder you Tirls have got Hang in your palace. You wouldn’t amble out so easily at Cloudcrown.”

Fromarch grunted. The carriage wheeled into the street just as Shingvere pulled a solid brass cylinder out of his robe and held it up with a flourish.

“Mage Prolep’s Infinite Latch,” he said. Then he lifted an eyebrow. “Isn’t it?”

Fromarch spoke a word. The cylinder, which was nearly long enough to stretch from fingertip to elbow and about as thick as a big man’s wrist, made three sharp clicking noises

On the third click it doubled its length. Shingvere yelped, but kept his grip.

“That’s it, all right,” said Fromarch. He whispered another word, and the cylinder noiselessly and instantly resumed its original size. Fromarch nodded approvingly. “That’s old, dark Tirlish magic,” he said, wistfully. “Mage Ovis has no use for it. But perhaps you and I do.”

Shingvere shut his mouth. “This Prolep,” he said. “Knew his business, did he?”

Fromarch shrugged. “He knew latches,” he said. “Otherwise, he was quite mad.” Fromarch tapped the latch with the bowl of his pipe. “It’s a bit unpredictable, but we can latch spells to it all day and never run out of latching mass.” The lean mage laughed without smiling. “Certain ugly Vonats might find this surprising in a brief, unpleasant way.”

“’Ere, hold on,” said Shingvere. “You just used the word unpredictable. Odd that you didn’t mention it earlier, when you talked me into pilfering a foreign king’s palace. So, unpredictable to what extent?” The Eryan frowned. “And why have I never heard of this Prolep?”

Fromarch shrugged. “Sometimes it unlatches all its spells at once,” he said. “And that’s why you’ve never heard of Prolep.”

Shingvere gently laid the latch across Fromarch’s knees and snatched his hand away. “This is your secret weapon?” he asked. “‘An ancient instrument of great power’,” he said, mocking Fromarch’s baritone. “‘Forgotten, by all but me’.” The Eryan shook his head. “Simply marvelous. When the trouble starts, you can explode with the latch, and I’ll set fire to my robes, and perhaps the Vonats will be so embarrassed they’ll call in all their spies and go home to take up apple ranching.”

Fromarch rubbed the latch’s dull case with the hem of his robe. “You talk too much,” he said. “Always have.”

Shingvere sighed. “Aye. You’re probably right,” he said. Then he lifted the carriage curtain a bit and squinted into the sun. “We’ve engaged in skullduggery, and we have our eldritch magics,” he said, as traffic rattled past. “What do we do now?”

Fromarch withdrew his pipe from his mouth. “We buy some Nolbit’s,” he said. “And we go back to my basement, and we spread out our tools, and we latch every spell we know to this,” he said, shaking the latch, “and then we just wait for that—”

“Language,” warned the Eryan, with a grin. “Profanity is the footstool of lazy intellect.”

“—for that unwashed hedge conjurer to lift a paw toward the thaumaturge,” said Fromarch. “At that moment, I’ll start unlatching, and I’ll stop when there’s a pair of empty Vonat boots on the floor and a sooty spot on the ceiling.”

“And if the latch fails before that?” said Shingvere, quietly.

Fromarch stuck his pipe in the right corner of his mouth and made a small shrug.

Shingvere grinned. “A hero’s death, right out of a Phendelit poem book,” he said. “Fromarch, as Meralda is fond of saying, you’re a treasure. An idiot, but a treasure nonetheless.” The Eryan saluted, laying his right hand over his heart. “Naturally, I vow to stand with you, and share your noble, if messy, doom.”

Fromarch sucked his pipe, toyed with the latch, and said nothing else all the way home.

The Gold Room was, if Meralda was any judge, in a full-blown tizzy.

Meralda’s grandmother had used the phrase to denote any sudden onset of frantic and ultimately futile activity. “Oh, they’re in quite the tizzy,” Grandma Ovis had proclaimed, that day so long ago when Meralda’s older sister had wed. “You’d think the world a-turnin’ depended on the roses.”

Looking about at court, Meralda mouthed the phrase herself.

The Phendelits and the Alons had all arrived in the night, and were to be formally welcomed at a tenth-hour ceremony. Meralda had been summoned at eight, apparently, under the assumption that thaumaturges had nothing better to do than sit and watch the day staff set up chairs, cover tables with tablecloths, and argue over placemats and placards.

And argue they did. A bevy of retired army officers, the king’s new Protocol Corps, was engaged in a round of bellowing and finger pointing with the tall, ancient palace butler known simply as Carter.

“You can’t seat an Alon clan chief next to a Phendelit Silver Circle Guardsman,” bellowed the tallest of the Protocol Corps officers. “The Silver will call the Alon a copperhead and the Alon will cut off the Silver’s nose and we’ll be at war before brunch, you imbecile!”

Carter lifted an eyebrow in mild disdain, straightened the gilt-edged placard bearing an ornate Alon clan sigil, and moved on to the next seat.

Meralda laughed behind her hand. Elsewhere, carts of chairs were being hauled in and unloaded, a small army of florists was filling the room with fresh-cut Phendelit greenrose, and scowling floorsweeps followed everyone about in a vain attempt to keep the wide, worn flagstones free of trash and debris.

A few other minor court figures were scattered about, waiting as Meralda was. There was Martin Flea, official chronicler to the court, who had plopped into his chair, waved at Meralda, and promptly gone to sleep. Cheslin Frempt, the People’s Advocate, sat a few seats away, looking bored and humming to himself. White-haired Elton Flynnedge, heir to the Flynnedge cobblestone empire, was scribbling away in a notebook by the north door.

Meralda looked up at the square-faced old clock above the portrait of King Ponnyamp IV. Eight and half-past?

“Oh, no,” she said, softly. An hour and a half of this?

The west doors flew open with a bang. Meralda whirled, her hand on her staff, but the open doors revealed only a battered chair-moving cart and a pair of red-faced roustabouts.

Behind them, though, came the captain. “Thaumaturge,” he said, hurrying past the cart. “What are you doing here so early?”

Meralda stood and shrugged. “Urgent summons,” she said. “Be in the Gold Room at eight of the clock. Bring your staff.”

The captain dodged chairs. “Ah, well,” he said. “Someone probably got a bit free with the summonses up on the second floor. Yvin just wanted you to check the wards, and I’ll bet you’ve already done that.”

“I have,” said Meralda. “All quiet.”

The captain smiled. “Good,” he said. “But as long as you’re here, Thaumaturge, might I have a word?”

Meralda shrugged again. “Only if it’s over coffee,” she said.

The captain grinned. “That, I can do. You there!” he bellowed.

A dozen servitors froze. “Bring a pot of coffee and a pair of mugs,” said the captain, fixing his gaze on a skinny youth struggling with a stack of chairs taller than himself. “Go to the kitchen. Tell them the captain wants coffee, mugs, and a plate of biscuits, and he wants them now. Go.”

The boy scuttled off.

The captain pulled back a chair and sat. Meralda did the same, leaning close when she saw the captain glance furtively about and motion her near.

“The Hang dock tonight,” he said, in a whisper. “They’ll be escorted to the docks by a pilot boat and then brought to the palace. Yvin’s cleared out half the north wing upper floors.”

Meralda nodded. “Has the army had any contact with them?” she asked.

The captain glanced about again. “We have,” he said. “Had to send a boat in close and ask what kind of draft their ships drew. Didn’t want them to run aground in the shallows outside Defton.” The captain chuckled. “The college sent over a pair of linguists and a professor who claimed he could write some Hang. They spent two hours jabbering at the Hang fleet master until the Hang broke down and asked the professors, in New Kingdom, if they needed directions to Tirlin.”

Meralda’s eyes widened.

“Oh, they speak New Kingdom quite well,” said the captain. “Like natives, one of the linguists said. Natives.” The captain sighed. “But that’s a matter for another time,” he said, as the serving boy trotted up with a tray of coffee and biscuits. “Have you moved the Tower’s shadow yet?”

Meralda scowled and took up a cup of coffee. “Why, certainly,” she said. “I had nearly twenty uninterrupted minutes just yesterday to work on it.”

The captain, his face blank, swallowed, took up a coffee mug, and waved the lad away. “Really,” he said. “Have you seen any papers today, Thaumaturge?”

Meralda froze in mid-sip. “Papers,” she said.

“The
Times
, in particular,” said the captain. “I thought the likeness of you was quite good. Most flattering, in fact. Though I did wonder if you really called the Tower ‘the lair of dread Otrinvion’.”

“I never said any such thing.”

“Of course not,” said the captain. He frowned. “But you’ll want to look at the story, anyway. Your shadow moving assignment is there, along with a lot of nonsense about lights seen again in the Wizard’s Flat.”

Meralda shook her head. “Oh, no.”

“Oh, yes,” said the captain. He glared at Martin Flea, who had stopped snoring, and then he lowered his face and whispered. “I’ve ordered the Tower sealed for the duration of the Accords, but you and I both know that won’t stop the foolishness.”

Oh, no,
thought Meralda.
That’ll only make it worse.
Before the Accords are done the Tower will be mobbed each night, as the entire populace makes a hobby of mistaking crows for dead wizards and reflections in the window glass as portents of doom, and I’ll have to shoulder my way past each and every one of them.

“Marvelous,” she said.

“I’ve told the guards to keep the tourists at bay while you’re working,” said the captain. “Is there anything else I can do?”

Meralda shook her head.

“Then go,” said the captain. “You’ve checked the wards. Why don’t I tell Yvin you had to leave to cast certain spells before the sun reached its zenith?”

Meralda stood. “That’s absurd,” she said. “Do keep a straight face, won’t you?”

“Always,” said the captain, from above his cup. “Mind the haunts, Thaumaturge.”

Meralda put her back to the throne and left the Gold Room to the captain and the chairs.

Chapter Six

“Here we go again,” whispered Kervis.

Meralda urged her magelamp brighter and mounted the first of the Tower’s winding stairs.

Behind her, the Bellringers followed, boots scraping on the stone with measured, careful steps. Meralda thought about all the novels she’d read, in which princes, queens, or spies, who invariably bore a single guttering candle, charged up the Tower stair, or leaped fearlessly from tread to tread.
Leapt, indeed,
mused Meralda.
No one, no matter the provocation, would dare take these stairs at a brisk walk, much less a headlong dash.

And candles? Impossible. Her own magelamp, bright though it was, cast a cone of light just wide enough at its base to illuminate three pairs of feet. Above, the magelamp lit only a tall, narrow swatch of the Tower wall.

The rest of the Tower remained cloaked in darkness. Darkness, and the faint sensation of constant movement at the edge of the light, as if Meralda’s magelamp alone kept something darker than the shadows barely at bay.

Tervis halted long enough to shift Meralda’s bag from one hand to the other. “I’m coming,” he said, at Kervis’ unspoken question. “Don’t stop.”

The trio resumed their climb. Meralda strained her ears for any hint of sound from the park. But again, not even a hundred paces up the stair, all the sounds of the world beyond were gone, shut away behind walls thicker than Meralda was tall.

“What was that game the Alons were playing?” asked Tervis, his voice echoing faintly. “It looked like fun.”

“They call it football,” said Meralda. “They played it during the last Accords, too.”

“It’s tearing up the grass,” said Kervis. “You ought to have heard the groundskeepers curse.”

Meralda grimaced. She had heard the groundskeepers bellowing, of course. Their language was such that after a moment even Angis blanched and turned away.

Kervis laughed softly. Meralda tilted the magelamp and looked down. Already, their ascent, though it had covered less than half a revolution around the Tower, had reached sufficient height that the glow of the magelamp no longer touched the floor below.