Balancer (Advent Mage Cycle) (13 page)

That’s saying something. Xiaolang hadn’t given this idea a very good margin of success to begin with.

“Let’s hope that the other teams had better luck than we did.”

“Yes,” he agreed, “Let’s hope. Regardless, you are
not
walking tomorrow.”

Uh-oh. “I wasn’t really that bad, was I?”

“
Yes. You were
.” Xiaolang and Night disagreed in stereo.

I guess I was riding tomorrow.

~*~

By the time that we got back to our lodgings the new Remnant magicians had already arrived, been organized into teams, and deployed. The building was actually emptier than it had been yesterday. I entered the foyer with every intent to hunt up my fiancée to see how she fared only to be sidetracked by a peek into the large conference room to the left of the front door.

It looked very different than it had this morning. No one could see the top of the table—every part of the surface had a map on it. On the maps stood slender, cylindrical pieces of wood that rested on top of every major city. Someone, I’d bet Chatta, had created little figurines not quite the size of my pinky that had different symbols carved into it. I recognized the seals for a Life, Water, Elemental, and Air Mage at a glance. Others had markings for a Witch or Wizard. Clever. That way they could keep track of which team had which type of magician.

From behind me, the door creaked open a little farther. “Garth?”

I turned to find Chatta standing just inside the doorway. She smiled at me, but it looked tired, and her eyes had that pinched look that said she had a whopper of a headache. I turned to her and drew her in for firm hug. “Hi, sweetheart.”

She melted against me with a happy sigh. “Oh, you have no idea how good that feels.”

“Rough day?”

“Everyone was very cooperative and willing to work. That wasn’t the problem. It was just keeping track of it all! Even with Shield, Dassan and Prince Audax’s help it just overwhelmed me at times. Everyone kept calling in with questions, or status reports, and sometimes people would
forget
to call in and tell us they had moved to a different area of the city.” She groaned in renewed frustration.

I rubbed her back in soothing circles. “They’ll be better at it tomorrow. For that matter,
you
will be better at it tomorrow. The rough part was figuring everything out, after all.”

“Hopefully that’s true.” She cuddled in a little firmer.

“So did the blood magic expert arrive?”

“Oh yes. Wizard Kamik Dassan. He’s very good. I can see why Raile thinks so highly of him. I actually sent him out to go check on something. It might be nothing, but it might be something sort of routine. He’ll be back tomorrow, so you can meet him then.”

Good enough for me. “That’s fine. Let’s go get some dinner, I’m starving.”

Chapter
Nine: Teamwork

This was quite the crowd for mid-afternoon, especially in a tavern this seedy. Shad braced both elbows against the bar and leaned further in, eyes oh-so-casually perusing the fellow patrons at this fine establishment. One of the chimney’s from the back kitchen wasn’t working properly, so a thick haze of smoke hung about, making Shad’s surveillance a little challenging. Not to mention his eyes water. The press of unwashed bodies slurring out orders for more ale didn’t help his concentration. Or his eye watering problem either.

The food served here had a soggy, half-done quality that offended even a veteran soldier’s taste buds. Shad wouldn’t have fed it to a dog, and for one very good reason: if he’d tried, the dog would have bit him. His nose had shut down the minute he’d stepped through the peeling doors out of sheer self-defense. To add insult to injury, every time the serving girl here passed him, she tried to cop a feel. Normally, Shad wouldn’t have minded if she were pretty.

She wasn’t.

Beside him, Hazard flinched, jostling against Shad’s elbow. Shad didn’t even need to look. “She got you?”

Hazard just let out a low growl, eyebrows slammed together in a straight line, a visible tic at one corner of his mouth.

Shad gave a sour grunt and shoved his untouched ale glass further away from him. Normally, he didn’t really mind reconnaissance. He’d rather be testing his reflexes and wits against a well-armed opponent, but he understood that sometimes you had to go
find
the bad guys before you could beat them up. It was just a logical, step-by-step process that had to be followed.

But this was the fifth seedy tavern he’d been in just as many days, and the previous four hadn’t been all that better. Well, they’d been short on lecherous barmaids, but still. After standing here for a half hour, getting the vibe of the place, nothing seemed out of place in this obviously typical afternoon crowd. Perhaps they should change to a different tavern.

Hazard abruptly went stock still. Shad’s eyes cut to him only to find Hazard intently studying something across the room.

“What?” he asked softly.

“Near the back door, young man with bushy eyebrows.”

Shad, shorter than his companion, had to ease up onto tiptoes before he could see over the crowd and spot the man Hazard described. The man in question seemed oddly out of place here. He looked more refined than these day laborers, not as roughhewn, and the clothes he wore were not made from coarse linen like his fellows. The expression of slight distaste and unease on his face also made him stand apart from the crowd. This was not his usual haunt and he did not feel comfortable here.

Returning his eyes to his drink, Shad casually commented, “He doesn’t look like the usual patron.”

“He’d be about the right age,” Hazard offered thoughtfully. “And he has that
look
to him, you know?”

“Can’t argue that. I don’t see anyone else, but…” Shad trailed off, eyes taking in the room again. “They usually run in packs.”

Hazard grunted agreement.

In the normal course of events, Shad would have suggested changing their viewpoint. Perhaps getting a room, or going up to the balcony so that they could have a bird’s eye view of the place. The right way to do this would be to
sit back, observe, and see
how many Star Order Priests were hiding in plain sight.

Shad had no desire to do things the right way.

He bumped his arm against Hazard’s to gain the other man’s attention, and then jerked his head toward the stairs leading to the balcony on the second level. Snagging his glass, he pushed away from the bar. Without a word between them, Hazard followed him up. Once there, Shad found a nice spot that gave him a good view of practically the entire room. He leaned his elbows against the railing and gave his partner a slight smile.

Hazard, for some strange reason, regarded him cautiously, taking several seconds to join him. “Shad, what are you plotting?”

“Plotting?” Shad objected in a mild tone.

“Scheming, then,” Hazard corrected, eyes narrowing.

Shad wagged a finger at him. “The correct word is ‘planning.’ I am
planning
the most effective way to find out the information we need.”

A distinct twinkle lit up Hazard’s dark eyes. “Oh, this ought to be good. Alright, Captain, what are you
planning
?”

“Well…” Shad rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “The suggested way to do this would take a while. We’d have to spend hours hanging around here, just to see if we could spot any other renegades, and even then it would be an educated guess on whether this tavern is harboring them or if they’re just hiding out here for their own reasons, right?”

Hazard cocked an eyebrow at him and didn’t say a word, although his smile grew.

“But with
my
method, we’ll know everything we need to in a very short amount of time.” Shad beamed at him.

“And that method is…?”

“Start a bar fight.”

Hazard managed to keep his face straight for two full seconds before he lost all control and started laughing. He doubled over, deep waves of laughter pouring out of his mouth.

“What?” Shad asked in mock-hurt. “Don’t you think it will work?”

“T-that’s what m-makes it funny,” Hazard gasped out, trying to gain control of himself with obvious effort. “It actually would! I mean, if they are being protected here, then as soon as a fight starts,
someone
is going to react to defend the renegades.”

“Right,” Shad agreed, pleased that Hazard saw the beauty of his plan. “And we’ll instantly know how many there are in here, too.”

Hazard drew in a breath, calming down, although the wide smile on his face didn’t leave. “So how are you planning to start it?”

Shad lifted the tankard in his hands with a wicked smile.

The big man regarded the full glass of ale, then turned to see the young man they’d spotted earlier, eyes measuring the distance. “Can you actually hit him from here?”

“Are you doubting my throwing arm?” Shad responded indignantly.

The expression on Hazard’s face stated quite plainly that he did doubt, but he only waved a hand in invitation.

Pleased to get his way, Shad backed up a step from the railing. His right arm came up as a guide, his left cocked back. Target acquired…wait for him to lean back, away from the crowd…almost…
now!

The glass sailed through the air, drops of ale spraying out over the crowd as it flew, and landed squarely in the chest of the renegade priest. The man let out a grunt that was audible even from their perch as the glass hit him, and he rocked back in his chair, crashing to the floor.

A moment of stunned silence, as people turned to see what had happened.

Then the main room flared into an uproar of noise and confusion as everyone stood at once.

“Nice throw,” Hazard complimented, eyeing the results with an appreciative nod. “And look, we have two…no, three people that went immediately to his aid.”

“And see that pocket over there?” Shad tried not to gloat, and failed, as he pointed to the other corner of the room. “That looks like another four Priests to me.”

“It does indeed.” Hazard gave a satisfied sigh. “We need to use this method more often.”

“Oh absolutely,” Shad agreed with a pleased smile.

~*~

After an early breakfast the next morning, we picked up where we left off. When I left the building to go saddle Night, I could already hear Chatta calling the teams through the mirror broach to get them started. I did not envy her the task.

Since I had been thoroughly lost the entire day yesterday, I didn’t even attempt to figure out where we needed to go. I just tied the reins to Night’s saddle horn and let him follow Xiaolang. I went back to searching with my magical sense.

The flow and ebb of the city was lost on me. Errant things registered on my senses—the smell of baking bread, the loud clangs of a blacksmith we passed, the shriek of an unhappy child. All of it jarred me out of the intense concentration I needed to unravel the magical energy all around me.

I blinked back into the world, letting my throbbing temples rest. Once again, time had passed by without my notice. We were well past noon now, and in a street of artisan guilds that were not in the least familiar.

“Since no one tried to interrupt me, I assume we haven’t found anything.”

“
There’s a Star Order building up ahead that Xiaolang wants to investigate, but that’s about the only semi-interesting thing that we’ve discovered,
” Night responded, plodding along in Hayate’s wake.

Xiaolang stopped dead in his tracks, head creaking in slow degrees to look toward the south of the city. He had the oddest look on his face—part disbelief, part dark comprehension, and mostly resignation.

“Xiaolang?” I ventured. I didn’t see anything in our vicinity that would put that look on his face, so it had to be something he was empathically picking up.

“We need to go where Shad and Hazard is,” he stated abruptly. Without another word of explanation, he quickly mounted Hayate and took off in a quick walk.

Night followed at his heels. I sat staring at my captain’s back for several moments in bemusement before I thought to ask my nreesce, “Do you know what’s going on?”

“
I just asked. Apparently, he’s been keeping tabs on all of the teams and he just sensed that Shad and Hazard are plotting something.”

Shad…Hazard…plotting something. Without adult supervision! Yes, I could see now why Xiaolang was worried.

Ahead, Hayate abruptly picked up the pace to something closer to a lope. On this crowded street, I would have thought anything faster than a walk would be a bad idea, but when a creature as ferocious looking as Hayate came bearing down on people at that speed, they quickly moved out of the way.

Still, even with Hayate acting as trailblazer, it took us close to a half hour to get down to the south side of the city. Xiaolang abruptly reined Hayate in at the front porch of a rather questionable tavern. I dismounted as well, ears perking at the amount of raucous noise coming from the place. It didn’t sound like the normal rowdiness of drinking men carousing around. Actually, it sounded more like a…fight.

From somewhere inside, a chair impacted against the window. The wooden frame held, so the chair never made it to the outside, but the loud bang it made startled me. My hand was halfway to my bon’a’lon without any conscious decision on my part.

Then two men tumbled out of the doors, landing one on top of each other. They were both red from exertion, hair mussed, clothes ripped, with developing bruises on their faces. With a growl, one man scrambled to his feet and dove right back into the fray. The other man just lay there, passed out in an undignified sprawl.

A dark suspicion entered my mind. “Xiaolang…Shad and Hazard are in there?”

He pinched the bridge of his nose and let out a year’s worth of sighs. “Yes.”

“Don’t tell me…they started this fight.”

“I have a notion they did.” Xiaolang looked as if he were actually ninety-nine percent positive that they had. Turning, he asked Night, “Would you call those two idiots out here?”