Chapter Eighteen

[cityofthehand]

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Maira schooled her expression, refusing to gape at the dour and dramatically impressive interior of the Archives. Though she had never seen so many books, a display of stunning wealth all on it own, she meant to act as if she had. The books seemed numerous as stars in the sky, all tucked into rows and rows of shelves going from floor to ceiling. Given that the Archives had to be at least five stories tall, that added up to more books than there were people in the Tayeland.

She followed behind Naran through the dim front room. The thin high windows let in so little light that magic lamps had to be lit during day time. They lined the walls glowing without actually brightening the place. Naran walked up to an enormous o-shaped desk occupied by a very thin, middle aged person busily scribbling something. Maira presumed they were the librarian.

After a quick, clipped exchange with the librarian, Naran signed a log book and got the keys to a private reading room on the fourth floor. As they ascended the stairs, he gave her a quick lesson in how books here were organized, how the shelves were marked, and how to follow the lines painted on the corridor floors to go where she wanted. They would light up for a sorcerer, but even without magic she could make out the blue, yellow, and white stripes.

“I may send you to get books from time to time,” he said.

“Why? I can’t even make the floor light up. I’ll get lost.”

He grinned. “I’m a master sorcerer, you’re my apprentice. It would be weird for me to get my own books. You’ll figure it out. If not, find a librarian. There’s always a few scuttling around,” he said, with a kind of shudder in his voice. He stopped at a numbered door and unlocked it, then handed her the second key, which she immediately put in her jacket pocket.

The room was perfectly dark until Naran waved his hand. Lamps sprang to life with a ‘pfff’ sound, revealing a somewhat cramped room with dark red wallpaper, five chairs and a table furnished with a stack of paper, an ink pen and a brush as well as four small glass jars of ink. Maira blinked. The Order must have been wealthy to give away ink and paper like that. She suddenly worried that perhaps they would have to pay per page or suffer a penalty for wasting ink and paper.

The minute they were seated, Naran raised a hand and flicked his wrist. The drawing reappeared between his fingers and he waggled his eyebrows at her mischievously. She spared him an amused laugh. Not a bad trick. He unfolded and smoothed out the page, smearing the charcoal a little as he did.
“Is this the true size of it or is the device bigger?” he asked.

“Smaller, actually. I drew bigger so I could think of details. I didn’t know what would be important.”

“Good, that’s good,” he said, staring down at the paper, fingers pressed to his temples. Without looking, he reached to the side and grabbed some paper, a jar, and a pen. He took the cap off, licked the nib and started to write quickly.

“Do we have to pay for those, because I don’t have a lot of money.”
“What?” he asked and raised his head. “No. This is what we pay dues for. Now, shh.” He finished writing, put the pen down and held his hand above the papers. He whispered a quick spell with his eyes closed.

“What was that?” she asked when he finished.

“A spell to make the paper unreadable to anyone but us. Also, it dries the ink.” He handed her the paper and their finger tips brushed, sending a tingle up Maira’s arm. They both paused, lingering slightly longer than necessary. “There’s your shopping list. That’s what we need.”

Saying nothing, she left the room as she studied the list. Then she looked up and realized she had no idea where she was going. With a sigh she picked a direction to walk in and hoped for the best.

Finding the first set of books took a very long time, but by mid-day - or what felt like midday - the shelves and hallways became familiar enough for her to make a mental map. She thought of them as roads in a part of the city she’d never seen before. The comparison worked even though, unlike a city, the library held no landmarks. Shelves became identical in the shadowed dimness. If not for the numbers on, she would never have found anything.

As the day dragged on, she found that lost was better than bored and useless. Naran read efficiently and quickly. Maira worked much harder at it. He raced through entire chapters in the time it took her to struggle through a few dense pages of tiny script. Keeping pace with him was impossible, she didn’t even bother trying. It wasn’t as if she could awe someone like him anyway. It would be like trying to impress the Asna’isi with how high she could jump.

She sighed and rested on her elbow, then flipped another page. When she saw a brightly colored picture there, she sat up straight and leaned closer to the book. The center of the diagram showed a red jewel wrapped in gold wire, attached to the center of a tiny gear that turned other gears. Save the colors, it resembled the jewel in the professor’s device. Thrilled to finally have something, she grabbed Naran’s arm with both hands.

“Look! Look!”

“Have you found something?”

“Look,” she said and pushed the book to him. She pointed at the jewel wrapped in wire. “It’s like the one in the device, except that one is green and the wires are silver.”

“Are you sure?” he asked. He sounded worried, and even glanced up from the book to study her for a moment. She nodded. He made a noncommittal grunting sound with his mouth closed, then another one. “Interesting.”

“What do you mean?”

He turned his own book toward her. She could not read the Old Empire words and looked away. Realizing that, he gave an apologetic look and explained. “The text says Soul Stealing spells should paralyze the victim.”

The borrowed memories of the professor’s death throes flashed in her mind. “But he wasn’t paralyzed.”

“Exactly. I’ve found only one spell that won’t paralyze the victim. An old one, and very dangerous.”

“Why?”

“Let a sorcerer so much as move a hand or speak, and they’re likely to cast a spell back you. So you have to paralyze them, which takes a lot of time and power. Sorcerers don’t surrender their souls easily. But if you needed a soul stolen quickly, you’d have to use this one.” He tapped the page so hard it made a dull thump with an accomplished, proud look on his face. “That’s what makes what you just said so interesting.”

“I still don’t get it.”

“It’s complicated, but in short, you need special things not a lot of people trade in. It’s bad magic and it’ll get you mixed up with bad sorcerers who can kill you from across the city. And the thing you just pointed at is very rare.”

She squinted at him with a smile. “You know who sells both.”

“I do,” he confirmed.

“Then let’s go.”

Naran stopped smiling. “You should stay.”

“What for?”

“It could be dangerous. Niuschka knows me, but I can’t have Lord Shadow’s agents there. If you go, we’ll have to leave them and you’ll be unprotected.”

“So? I can handle myself. And you’ll be with me.”

“Are you really eager for more trouble?” he asked, sharply. She frowned at him.

“Do you really think the librarians are going to let me hang around here without you?”

He cursed so quietly she nearly missed it. “Fair enough. Stick close to me, don’t say anything unless you’re asked directly. And whatever you do, under no circumstances make any promises, bargains, or agreements with anyone. Even if it’s just a figure of speech. No matter what. And don’t eat or drink anything, even if you’re offered.”

“Why not?”

“Because,” he said, standing and shutting his book. “I don’t want to lose my first apprentice on her first day. How would that look to the other sorcerers? I’d get a bad reputation.”

“What’s your plan for getting away without being followed?” she asked.

He cocked his head at her. “What do you think?”

She sighed. It was pretty obvious. “I didn’t know you could take someone else with you.”

“Most sorcerers can’t, but I can take a passenger or two, depending,” he replied. He organized the books and papers on the table neatly, putting the pens and ink jars back as they had been. “You’ll want to be standing for this.”

“Oh.” Maira got up quickly and pushed her chair to the table. “So what happ-”

All she saw was Naran pulling out a talisman before a bright flash blinded her. She raised her hands to shield her face and cold wind blew, bringing outside smells and sounds with it. She lowered her hands and looked around at the city street he’d teleported them to. She tipped backwards and flapped her arms to regain balance. Naran reached out and quickly put a hand on her back to tilt her forward again.

“You could’ve warned me!” she snapped, sidestepping away.

“It’s easier that way the first time. Trust me,” he said. Maira looked around to get her bearing. The buildings and street signs put them in the First Round and the smell of sooty factories and leather tanning shops gave her the rest. The Heel District.

“This way,” he said, pointing down a north-leading road.

“If you can teleport people with you, why didn’t you just teleport me to Lord Shadow’s tower?” she asked, thrusting her hands in her jacket pockets.

“I can only teleport to places I’ve been, and it doesn’t work if someone is running from me. Or it does, but only half of you gets teleported.”

The gruesome image made her flinch. “That’s horrible.”

“Magic has its risks. That’s why it takes so much time to get right. An ignorant sorcerer is worse than an evil one. At least an evil one will only kill the people they’re targeting.”

“The person we’re going to see, Niuschka, are they evil?” she asked, stopping to let a wagon loaded with leather hides rush past them. He reached out and took her elbow as though she might step into the street on accident.

“No, just opportunistic. And Niuschka takes the masculine. He gets supplies nobody else can and isn’t picky about who he sells to. He doesn’t get malicious until you cheat or steal from him, even though he does a lot of cheating and stealing himself. That’s why you have to be careful. Don’t touch anything, don’t say anything, don’t make promises. Sorcerers are worse than lawyers. They’re sneaky and they play with words. Say the wrong thing without thinking, and you might end up accidentally selling your body and soul.”

“I’ll just keep my hands in my pockets and my mouth shut, then.”

“Good idea.”

They walked onward and stopped in front of a modest, one story mud brick building with a single large window and an open green wood door that defied Maira’s expectation of a gloomy, ominous den of evil.

Maira let Naran enter first but stayed close with her hands clenched in her pockets, tight. Touching something would have been far too easy in the cluttered interior, filled with tables and shelved piled high with books, jars, boxes, and other magical supplies. Though it smelled innocuously enough of dust, wood, and incense, a tickling uneasiness ran along Maira’s skin. Something invisible but tangible and scarcely contained bristled in the air. Every breath and every step immersed her in it. Power lay here, resting fitfully at best.

By the far wall a young, pale skinned human with bright, short cropped red hair and a gray-blue coat sat on a stool sewing something. They bit on a threaded needle with canines because they lacked two bottom teeth in the front. Maira squinted at the purple and white bracelet the human wore. The tiny silver charm marked her as a priestess of the Silent Goddesses.

“Is Niuschka here?” Naran asked, coming to stand in front of the stool. “I need to speak with him, and I’m willing to make it worth his while.”

The woman didn’t answer in words, but lead them silently, beaconing with a crooked finger. She took them to the back of the store, an even more cluttered place than the front. Animal hides, candles, jars full of things Maira didn’t want to know about like teeth and eyeballs floating in yellow liquid packed the dusty shelves. Immediately Maira thought of the saying “I’d give my right eye to have that”. She wondered if the priestess had lost teeth to Niuschka in such a way.

The priestess took them to the corner of the back room and stooped down. She pulled up an iron ring in the floor and lifted a panel to reveal stairs going down. Once more, Naran lead and Maira followed close behind down into the damp, dank basement. The priestess stayed behind them to close the door. Darkness enveloped when it closed with a thunk, leaving only thin slats of light coming between the floorboards to pierce the blackness below. .

“Work in the dark why don’t you, Niuschka?” Naran said, jovially, from the bottom of the stairs. No one answered.

Then metal clicked on metal. Maira turned her head and the priestess gave a predatory smirk, reaching for a coat pocket. Maira knew that motion well from seeing Naran: the motion of a sorcerer reaching for a talisman. She grabbed the priestess’s arm and pulled her down with a hard yank. The unbalancing toppled them both. They fell together sloppily down the stairs, half rolling and half sliding.

The sorceress dropped the talisman. It clattered metallically on the stones and slid off into the dark, lost.

“Naran, it’s a trap!” she screamed scrambling across the floor on her hands and knees to find it. The sorceress caught her leg and pulled her back with surprising strength for a human with less mass and height than Maira herself.

She gripped the sorceress’s arm and yanked her down to the ground, then tried to cover her bodily to keep her down. She shouted for Naran to do something and bright light flashed, illuminating the basement. As the priestess rolled over to get free, flipping Maira on her back, she saw the dead body in the corner with an bloody, opened throat, laying heaped in a red pool. Maira screamed in horror and thrashed hard to get away.

“She killed Niuschka!” Naran shouted.

I kind of figured that already, Maira thought, absurdly sarcastic as she fought to get the sorceress off her. “Get us out of here!”

“It’s warded! Teleporting doesn’t work in here!” he shouted.

Things clanged and clashed and crashed around as overturned everything looking for a weapon. The sorceress chuckled and landed a hard punch to Maira’s sore shoulder. With a pained shout she grabbed a fistful of red hair and yanked with all her strength. Reddish strands came out in a clump and earned an ear piercing screech from the sorceress who reared back in pain.

Maira twisted to get out from under her. The sorceress slapped hard, then put her hands around Maira’s through, bearing down so hard her arms shivered with effort. Maira kicked and dug her nails in, swiped at the sorceress’s eyes but got no leverage until Naran hauled the woman off and threw her down to the ground.

Coughing desperately Maira rolled onto her stomach. Behind her, Naran and the sorceress traded hard, fast blows along with grunts and growls like fighting dogs. Maira turned and got clumsily to her feet, stepping back from the fight to get out of Naran’s way.

He caught the sorceress’s wrist when punched and kneed her in the stomach, then shoved her so hard she went sailing over a table and sent its contents crashing to the floor. She didn’t get up immediately, but Naran kept his hands raised defensively. Maira glanced to him and then to a shimmer of something by the overturned table. The sorceress’s arm shot out to grab at the glinting object. Maira squinted, then figured out what it was. The sorceress found her talisman.

“Look out!” she cried out and rushed into the center of Naran’s mass to bring him down as the sorceress rose and screamed her spell. The wall behind them exploded with a burst of light. Maira clung fiercely to Naran, covering his head and body with her own as stone shrapnel and dust sprayed over them in a stinging rain.

All stilled for the space of a breath. Then Naran rose to his feet and held his talisman high, speaking his own spell at the moment the sorceress cast hers again. Light collided with light and bathed the room in a ghostly glow that revealed the signs of Niuschka’s last battle. Streaked handprints in blood marked the wall near the other ragged craters made by explosions. Maira scuttled away backwards to get behind Naran and the shield he made.

“Whoever you are, I can promise you I’m the better sorcerer. Even if I have to wear you down moment by moment I will get you,” he said, and though he was panting from battle, his voice sounded steady and clear. “Who sent you here to kill him? What did they want?”

The sorceress remained impassive. “The rest of my crew will come soon. You won’t be able to handle them all.”

“If you’re dead it might even the numbers a little,” he replied. “I’m a very good sorcerer. And my apprentice once took on four Asna’isi agents and lived to tell the tale. Surrender now and you’ll live long enough to flee from your employers.”

“Who said I was being paid?”

“You’re holding a very powerful talisman and using a spell any first year could do. No way you enchanted it on your own. Someone gave that to you. Tell me who and you’ll live. I’m not a blood thirsty man. I know it’s just business.”

“Then you understand that failing such powerful employers is something I can’t do.”
Naran turned his head only a brief second. “Maira, go open the door.”

“The lock is warded, you’ll never get through it,” the sorceress taunted.

Maira looked around and found an iron headed mallet resting by an small anvil. “Is the wood warded?” she asked Naran, hefting it up.

In the pale light, the woman frowned as Naran’s mouth curved to a smile. “Did I mention my apprentice is also very clever?”

Maira hurried to the top of the stairs. She lifted the mallet and swung with all her strength at the door above. Wood cracked and splintered but didn’t completely break. Fractured streams of light poured down. She swung again and again and got an encouraging crunch and crackle but not a hole big enough to get even her head and one arm through. That would be enough to get the lock open from the outside, if she managed. Giving a frustrated grunt and she went at the broken planks in shorter, fiercer bursts until she had destroyed the door sufficiently. Panting, she peaked up through the hole and across the floor.

Five pairs of dirty boots belonging to five angry looking people greeted her. The largest, a gigantic pallid human with a shaved head, laughed down at her. They’d obviously been waiting. The shaved one moved to grab her and Maira screamed, ducking down beneath the door and down the stairs.

“Naran!” she shouted. “They’re here!”

“Don’t let them in! Hold the door!” he yelled back, sounding strained.

The big one kicked hard to knock away the rest of the wood. It cracked easily under enormous feet. Maira pressed herself to the stair rail, waiting and clutching the mallet. The next kick sent the foot all the way through and she swung at it. The iron head connected perfectly with shin. Bone, like wood, cracked loudly and blood splattered her face where a broken tip of bone jutted through flesh and cloth. The big one roared in pain and fell with a hard, loud thud.

Above her head, another yelled, “You, that side, you, the other. Quickly!”

Maira clutched the mallet in dread and swung at a dark brown hand that reached down. This person caught the mallet and yanked it away while another pair of hands reached down, grabbed her up by her braids and the collar of her jacket. Wood shards stabbed at her as they pulled her up, kicking and squealing. She clawed into the skin of those that held her, taking away skin and blood under her nails.

Suddenly the one who held her hair gave a strangled noise. She glanced up and watched their eyes go wide and empty. The others let go and turned. Maira slumped, half through the hole, confused as she watched the glaze eyed one grab at ropes around their throat before a force pulled them back and down onto their haunches. The attacker fell hard and revealed Yena as the one at the other end of the rope.

The attacker wriggled like a hooked fish as Yena put a boot on their shoulder and yanked once with a coldly serene expression. Bone snapped, the body stilled. Beside her, another attacker dropped at Kei-zi’s feet, clutching a bloodied chest as they flopped over a third attacker.

All that remained was a half-Tsaqa Rok, a thin but full chested fighter holding a pair of three-pronged daggers. A hard, fast feint forced Kei-zi back one step and then another. The Rok backed Kei-zi towards the wall slashing at his guts and barely missing by inches each time the daggers made a pass.

Yena looked bored as she cast the second rope dart and struck the Rok in the temple so hard even Maira winced. They went down with eyes that never closed again and Kei-zi let out a breath as he bent double and braced on his knees.

“Take all my fun why don’t you, Yena?” he said, giving her a grin. He stood up and retrieved a cloth from his pocket to wipe blood away before resheathing his daggers under his knee-length fitted red velvet coat.

Maira struggled out of the door and laid prone on her belly, panting and trembling. “They killed Niuschka. There’s another one, in the basement. Naran’s holding her. She’s got talismans.”

“Oh good, two to interrogate,” Kei-zi said, putting hands on his hips where a belt cinched around his dress. “Flip a stick for the sorceress. You know how I love mystical types.”

The big one with the broken leg laughed deep and raggedly. Maira stood quickly, the hairs on her neck and arms prickling at the sound.

“You still do not know who your enemy is, do you?” the big one laughed.

“Eh, we might have an inkling or two,” Kei-zi replied. “Unless you care to tell us. We’re very good listeners. What did you say your name was?”

“Dead Man. My name is dead man now. And so are yours. Dead people. All of us.”

Kei-zi approached, his heels punctuating his steps against the wood floor. “Doesn’t have to be that way, mate. Tell us who hired you and why. The leg’s not so bad, and if your bosses are hanging at the end of a rope, they can’t chase you.”

The big man laughed with a full, thick, grumbly sound that brought sickness crawling up from Maira’s stomach. “It’s not your employers, is it? It’s someone else,” she said. Things locked into place in her mind. He laughed because his employers weren’t the ones causing the evil the professor made the device to stop.

His laughter stopped cold and the dread grew worse in the silence. “Why did you come to Niuschka then?”

“Tell us who they are!” she shouted at him, desperate. “Please!”

“I am forbidden. I took an oath.”

Frustrated, Maira approached. Yena shouted, “Don’t get close, he can still -” but she stopped when Maira crouched at the edge of the pool of blood, more than close enough to get stabbed. She studied his eyes. No malice resided there. People never lied with their eyes, only their mouths. The man before her lacked the uncaring, soulless affect of mercenaries and habitual murderers. His face held pain, dread, and confusion. He cared about something, somehow.

“What oath did you take, exactly?”

“I swore I would speak no word that would give anyone any clue, any hint of who hired me or why or anything to do with their business, I swore I would speak no word that could harm them.”
“Could you show us without speaking?” she asked.

He laughed for the third time, but relief edged the noise. He grabbed the collar of his shirt and ripped it to reveal his chest and the Red Hand mark tattooed there. Behind her, even unflappable Yena gasped.

“Fuck me running,” Kei-zi said, eyes going wide as fifty-mark coins.

The big man’s eyes saddened. He turned his face away. “Step back from me.”

“What?”

“Step back,” he growled, suddenly fierce. She got up and stumbled back in alarm as he drew out a fist-sized blue talisman from his pants pocket. He put it to his chest and mumbled sorcerer’s words. Nothing happened and Maira took a tenuous step forward.

Then he coughed, fell to his side and writhed on the ground, tearing again at his shirt. Water gushed out of his mouth and his nose like a fountain statue, mixing with the blood on the floor.

“Dammit, he’s killing himself!”

Kei-zi stepped over the bodies to get to him, but Yena put her hand out and pressed back against the center of his chest. She shook her head and the man died. “He couldn’t be saved,” she murmured.

Kei-zi turned to kick something and a blinding light shot up from the basement and shook the entire shop.

Naran. Maira heaved the basement door open and raced down the stairs. Naran and the sorceress both lay across the dirty floor, unmoving.

“No!” she screamed and rushed to him. She rolled him onto his back and shook him hard. “Naran, get up! Talk to me! Come on, say someting. Now’s not the time to start shutting your big mouth!” She put her ear close to his mouth to check for breath. He groaned softly and batted her hands away with a weak slap before he sat up. “Gods, Naran, are you all right?”

When he failed to answer, she panicked and reached for his coat. She pulled it back and pushed up his shirt. She felt all around his hair chest, his stomach, his shoulders, feeling for sticky slick blood. Wounds in the chest or gut could happen fast, if you’d been knocked out you might not know you’d been hurt and bleed out. Maira’s hands felt nothing but skin, hair, cloth and dry warmth, but he still didn’t speak. Head wound, maybe? He pushed and she pushed back and check his head and neck frantically.

“Maira!” he finally shouted and grabbed her wrists. “I’m all right. Just a little dizzy. I’m not hurt.”

She nodded though she didn’t know what he was saying, just that he was talking and she hadn’t felt any blood. Relief hit her like waking from a nightmare. Without thinking she threw her arms around his neck and embraced him tightly, as if he might escape or die if she let go. I could’ve gotten you killed, she thought but couldn’t say for all her trembling.

“Hey, it’s all right. I’m fine. I don’t go down that easily,” he said. Warm hands rubbed her back and she buried her face in his shoulder, holding her breath and trying not to shake so hard. When she had the werewithall to let go, she laughed for no reason and he laughed, too.

“It’s good you’re unharmed, Mr. al-Shahd. Now you can explain what’s going on and why a Red Hand officer just committed suicide right in front of me,” Yena said, standing at the end of the stairs, rope dart hanging loosely from her right hand.

Naran got to his feet quickly, standing in front of Maira protectively. The two of them traded equally steely stares. “Maira, what do you want to do?”

She sighed, got to her feet and brushed damp dirt off her pants. “The only thing we can do. Tell her the truth.”