No Return (27 page)

Gota fi Junnun, only sixteen years old but a promising student, face flayed as his helmet burst, torso pocked with innumerable small holes, bloomed an aura of blood that vaporized instantly around him. Hamen i Loren, Ebn’s one-time lover, a man of immaculate taste and speech, was cut nearly in two by a large flake of marble. Intestines bubbled and burst from both halves of his body. Zi-Te bon Ueses, martial arts master and gambling enthusiast, was sliced from clavicle to groin but stayed conscious for several seconds, screaming a fine red mist.

Ebn watched each fatal blow, reversing the spell repeatedly so that all of her officers could be accounted for. Her stomach did not turn as it had the first few times—proof a person could grow used to anything.

In the midst of the chaos, Adrash disappeared. Ebn reversed and slowed her memory to a crawl. No fade, no wavering around the god’s body, no sign at all that he would vanish. Clearly, nothing could be gleaned from this portion of memory, yet Ebn lingered on it every time. The god stood, fixed as stone. Then he did not, and it was as though he had never existed in that place. The raw power needed to enact such magic boggled her mind, horrified her in a way the deaths of the mages did not.

And here, in the vacuum Adrash had created: An anomalous event that had eluded her for the first two weeks of her search through the recalled memory. She chastened herself for taking so long to spot it, but knew how lucky she had been to notice it at all. Certainly, she could not be blamed for missing such a slight gesture during the disaster. Qon’s hemorrhaging had occupied all of her attention.

The sequence lasted only four seconds. Immediately following Adrash’s disappearance, Pol swiveled his head toward the moon, eyes clearly tracking a moving object. He ripped his gloves off and made a gesture, as if he were turning a globe in his hands. A heartbeat later, his eyes widened and his mouth fell open. It was this expression—so odd on Pol’s typically controlled features—that had first alerted her to the moment’s significance.

Stop
. Ebn returned to the beginning and replayed the sequence slowly. By its nature, a recalled memory wanted to move at normal speed, and her head ached with the strain of holding it back.

There. Between these two seconds
, she told herself. Something out of place.

Again
.
Again
. Her temples pounded.

Nothing new revealed itself, yet she knew in her womb that Pol had done something highly irregular. After years of traveling in orbit, she had learned to trust her intuition. The obvious conclusion was that he had seen Adrash leaving and cast a spell in response, but Ebn could not make herself believe this. Pol’s magical faculties had not progressed beyond hers. His lore was not so esoteric that she could not recognize it.

Frustrated, she moved forward to the second event of note. She watched herself fumble to hold the flaps of Qon’s suit closed, willing them to mend while her friend hemorrhaged, coughing clouds of blood that frosted on Ebn’s helmet. She pulled Qon to her chest and attempted to extend her spell of protection around them both. Tired from casting her own disastrous spell of influence at Adrash, the minor charm proved beyond her abilities.

In the final seconds of her life, Qon pointed in the direction of the Needle. Her expression alone had caused Ebn to turn, yet the view did not impress anything upon her. Despite repeated and painstaking examination, the spheres appeared unaltered.

Of course, she had not trusted her eyes alone. Queries over the last month had confirmed her suspicion: since the disaster, the telescopists had not observed a major change in the Needle’s alignment.

Nonetheless, Qon and Pol had seen something. Had they actually followed the god’s flight?

Or had they seen something else entirely?

‡

The recall spell faded. It exited through the sutures of her skull, easing the pressure within.

Why
, she asked herself,
have I allowed this to happen?

She could not pretend ignorance. She had angered Adrash by attempting to sway him with magic, an aggressive act to which he had responded in kind. Perhaps if she had stuck to her own plan and merely projected goodwill it would have worked, but she had been unable to keep her own desire from coloring the spell. Just as she had feared.

Undoubtedly, Adrash had recognized her. Sixty years was no time at all for the god.

Had she truly expected a second attempt at seduction to meet with favorable results? Certainly, she had known the risks. Perhaps she simply had not cared about risk. Qon’s life, the lives of her officers? They meant nothing in the face of her overwhelming desire to possess Adrash. This had been the true reason for approaching the god, not good will.

No
. Ebn rejected the idea that she had lost her moral bearing completely. True, she had let her desire cloud her judgment again, but the ultimate goal remained the same. Adrash must be convinced of the world’s worth.

She sighed, massaging a kink in her neck. She rose from her couch and walked naked onto the balcony, where the air was cool and smelled strongly of leaf rot. The chill of fall had seeped into everything, but she lay on the flagstones anyway. For a few minutes she shivered, waiting for the stone to warm beneath her. The morning sun soaked into her eggplant-colored skin, feeding her nutrients essential to the functioning of her body.

Slowly, the details of the encounter with Adrash drifted from her mind. Though she would never admit it aloud, in a way the disaster had freed her. She could sink no lower. Soon, she would receive a summons from the king. He would question her judgment, and she would defend herself. Defending herself, she would finally understand the how and why of her actions. It had always been this way, testing and retesting in response to the expectations of others.

She would triumph, and renew her purpose.

Someone knocked on the door. Ebn heard the whisper of slippered feet as her servant jogged to the entry, and then the girl’s high, fluting greeting. The response, however, could not be understood. The voice was too low, the rhythm of speech oddly clipped.

The short exchange over, soft feet whispered toward Ebn.

“What?” she asked. She did not open her eyes.

“There is a man here to see you, magess. Shavrim Coranid.”

“I do not know a Shavrim Coranid, girl. You have a list of my acquaintances. Unless he is on official business, send him on his way.”

“He is not on official business,” a deep voice sounded.

Ebn’s eyes snapped open and she rolled to the left. She had not yet drunk her daily alchemicals, but enough magic remained in her veins from the previous day to cast one or two spells.

Binding the intruder seemed best. She rose to her feet and thrust her hands forward in one fluid motion. The spell moved visibly along her arms, like waves cresting and breaking under her skin. Thin lips pulled back from small, sharp teeth.

She paused. The man whose bulk filled her doorway held no weapon. His hands were crossed on the immense drum of his belly.

Two stubby horns sprouted from his temples.

“I have information about one of your mages,” he said. “For the right price, I will tell you interesting things about a young mage named Pol Tanz et Som.”

‡

Per his suggestion, they sat on the balcony. He did not want to ruin her delicate wrought-iron furniture. “I weigh four hundred and sixty-seven pounds,” he explained.

Ebn could not place the man’s accent, but his lineage was clear enough. Though surgery and magic could produce a hybrid in appearance, she knew this was not the case in regard to Shavrim Coranid. Very likely, he had worn tight-fitting clothing so that his nature would be obvious to her. His every muscular twitch fascinated her, yet she fought the urge to stare.

She recognized him, of course. How had she not noticed his uniqueness the night he had called a dragon from the sky?

By surprising her, the man had gained the high ground.

He would not be allowed to keep it.

She remained naked. The man had already seen her unclothed, so there could be no advantage in dressing now. Such an action would only reveal her discomfort. Best to affect an air of amused disdain, talk as if she were accustomed to unannounced visitors and their implied threats. She would not ask how he had reached her apartment without identification, how he had convinced her servant to let him in, or how he had lived anywhere near the city without the academy discovering him.

This last proved hardest to resist. At her core, Ebn was a scholar. To her knowledge, no quarterstock of Shavrim’s obviously robust mental and physical health had ever been discovered. She resolved to cast a tracking spell upon him as he left, so that she might observe him remotely before taking further action.

The servant returned with tea and poppicut pastries, and then retreated.

“How much?” Ebn eventually asked. Her expression did not change, nor did her tone. They had been discussing fall, the myriad colors of dying leaves.

The corners of Shavrim’s eyes crinkled. “One pound.”

Ebn smiled openly but did not laugh. “Ridiculous. I do not know what kind of information you have. I will give you an eighth of a pound, and you will tell me something of value. We will proceed from there.”

“You misunderstand me.” The man leaned forward slightly. “I know the worth of my information, and by all accounts you are a trustworthy woman. I do not need to see the dust right now. If you agree to pay me afterward on the condition of the information’s value, it will be sufficient. You are a sorceress. I am a wyrm tamer. If you wish to detain or punish me, I cannot hope to resist. Trust, then, will bind us.”

Ebn considered, then nodded agreement. “Out with it,” she said, all pretense of gaiety extinguished.

Shavrim held three thick fingers up. “Pol is dissatisfied with your leadership and he intends your downfall. I do not yet know where or how he plans to do this, but he intends to do it soon. Do not underestimate his power. Despite your attempts to keep alchemical resources from him, he has acquired the materials he needs.”

Two fingers. “He has somehow managed to knock one of the Needle’s spheres out of alignment. Very minutely. Most likely, your scholars did not recognize it. Adrash changes their direction often enough that it probably seemed like another of his minor whims, yet if you examine your logs you will see that a slight adjustment was made on the seventh sphere from the moon at the exact moment of the god’s attack.

One finger. “Prior to or just after your encounter with Adrash, Pol began to modify his body in some way. His reactions are quicker—unnaturally so. His spell-casting is improving by leaps and bounds. As I am sure you have noticed, he has taken to wearing black, close-fitting garments, designed so that only his face and hands show. He will not undress completely in my presence.”

‡

Her fingernails bit into her palms. The tongues pushed back. “You and Pol are lovers,” she said.

His amber gaze did not waver. “Yes.”

Her hearts shuddered in her chest, restarted off-kilter. A pressure built in her throat, as if she were being strangled. She had known it. Of course she had. The boy had always been so self-assured. He carried himself like someone who enjoyed fucking. She could see it, clearly. She was no fool, and she had her jar of sex spells to prove it.

Get off it
, she told herself.
That is the least important fact you have learned.
“Thank you,” she said, and stood. She snapped her fingers and her servant appeared in the doorway. “Retrieve one pound, four ounces of dust for this man.” She looked down at Shavrim. “You did not lie. That was certainly worth the money.”

The quarterstock furrowed his brows. “Please sit down, Magess bon Mari.” She met his stare, shrugged, and sat. She did not doubt the man’s intentions even slightly. Now that she knew the truth about Pol, the whole world felt bright and clear, her path through it obvious. Not a comforting truth, no, but knowing it was better than believing a lie.

She would crush Pol. She would force him to love her and then watch him die.

“I will take the extra dust,” Shavrim said. “But you deserve something for it.”

“You have more?” she asked. “He must have told you that I love him. Surely he has seen it. He has known me for too long.” Her voice dropped an octave, became a warning. “I do not want to hear any more about his disdain for me. Clearly I mean nothing to him. If you have ever loved, you know this kind of pain.”

He smiled without humor. “I have been betrayed before, and have no desire to increase that particular pain. Instead, I will offer you a small boon: Garrus Eamon. He works at White Ministry, in the morgue. Recently, he was caught filtering alchemical materials from corpses. He and Pol are lovers.”

She filed the name. The quarterstock had given her more than he needed to.

He stood, and offered his hand. She took it, the first time she had touched another person without her gloves on in over three decades. He did not flinch when her tongue tasted his palm.

As she walked him to the door, she marveled at the way her life had been overturned. It had happened so quickly, so cleanly, an entire limb cut from her body without pain. A few exchanged words with a stranger, and she was a new person.

She had also figured out the anomaly in her memory. When Pol removed his gloves, for a split second he revealed a small patch of lustrous black on his wrist. Ebn visualized it clearly.

A tattoo. She would not even need to use the recall spell to confirm it.

Had he really been stupid enough to use alchemical paint on his own skin?

On the other hand, if it worked...

At the door, she faced Shavrim. It shocked her to find that he stood a few inches shorter than her. “Why did you do this?” she asked.

“I need the money.”

“Enough to betray a lover?”

He shrugged his immense shoulders. “My work as a tamer does not pay well, and Tansot is a poor place to be a fighter. Still, I am a fighter, and Danoor is fast approaching.”