Aethersmith (Book 2) (63 page)

“This is not even taxing me,” Kyrus said. “I have had little
cause to test myself, but I have been putting little pieces together of late.
The assassin who attempted to take the life of Emperor Sommick in the days
leading up to his coronation—his Source was rather impressively strong. Yet on
more than one occasion, I have seen evidence of others either claiming or being
unable to secure hold of a strong-Sourced individual. I nearly crushed that
assassin to death, nearly suffocated him from being unable to move his lungs.
Before I release you, stop your fighting, or I will wait until you pass out
from lack of air.” Kyrus noted that the attacks against his construct ceased.

He took a moment to reinforce his own shielding spell, lest
Dolvaen have taken things badly, and unraveled his own magic. Dolvaen collapsed
back in his chair, gasping for breath. Kyrus allowed him a moment to gather
himself.

“How did you do that? What spell did that demon teach you? I
saw you cast nothing,” Dolvaen blurted once he collected enough breath to do
so.

“That was telekinesis. I know few spells well enough to cast
them silently. It was either that or a light spell, or simple firehurling.
Anything else, you would have seen me perform.” Kyrus felt that his
arm-crossing was perhaps carrying more weight than when he had first tried it.

“I had nothing to do with those murders. It would have been
patently idiotic to do so. By striking at his lowest loyal underlings, it
merely alerted him to a conspiracy, if he did not already have full knowledge
of one.”

“He knew. He has known from the first, though more by
instinct than fact,” Kyrus replied.

“You have not told him of my involvement, have you?” Dolvaen
sounded sure of the answer when he asked it.

Kyrus humored the question anyway. “No. I have yet to decide
what is best for the Empire. For the time being at least, the political sphere
is free of his influence.”

“Can you be so naive as to think so?” Dolvaen asked, raising
his voice. “The emperor is his pet, he has agents throughout the Empire, and
even you are appointed indirectly by his hand.”

“The latter is his mistake, if he thinks to dominate
politics via me. Let him play at war. I will see what I can do to sort out the
rats’ nest of double-dealing within the Circle and among the nobles. As such, I
need to know as much as you are able to provide about those murders.”

“There is little to tell; the servants are under the same
oblivious compulsion as much of the palace staff. They remember what pertained
directly to their jobs, and nothing else. The murders were daggerwork but no
weapon was found.”

“What of whoever was tasked with answering doors?”

“There was a visitor at one of the three, as far as the
chamberlain remembered, but of course, no identity, nor even a clue as far as
time.”

Kyrus said nothing, but seemed to have discovered a clue
that Dolvaen was either overlooking or refusing to share.

* * * * * * * *

The food was slop, but at least he was no longer chained
naked to the walls. Faolen counted it as progress at least. His merchant
disguise had been ruined during his capture. The clothing the jailors had
provided was undyed wool, still smelling of the pasture by Faolen’s reckoning.
It itched against his bare skin, stung where it rubbed against raw wounds—which
was pretty much everywhere on him. He was constantly putting up with scabs
tearing loose and seeping blood. The latter, strange as it seemed even to him,
proved to be a boon.

When Anzik Fehr has returned the Staff of Gehlen, Faolen had
proven the truth of his end of the bargain; he had access and some degree of
influence over Anzik’s Tellurak counterpart. The return of the staff fulfilled
his end of the deal he had made with Jinzan Fehr, but the boy’s escape had
forestalled any thought of release. After all, Faolen might be the only one
still able to track the boy down.

Thus Faolen had been upgraded to the sort of prisoner who
was fed and clothed, the sort who was not tortured for information. He was now
in fine company along with killers, rapists, and thieves.

Why did the boy run?
Faolen wondered. Jadon had been
no help in answering that. Wendell got blank stares when he asked about Anzik.
He got blank stares back from the boy when he asked about a great many things,
but if it were possible, they grew blanker when the subject of his twin came
up.

Faolen had not been idle in his waiting. Left alone for long
hours in the deserted lowest level of the old Kadrin dungeon in what was once
occupied Megrenn, he worked at the beginnings of a plan. His fingernails had
grown long and ragged, sharp enough after a bit of careful filing against stone
that he could cut skin with them. Far from an effective weapon to overpower
jailors with, it was enough to begin altering the runes that the vile Megrenn
spymaster had cut into his flesh. It would be a long time before the wounds
healed enough on their own for him to try drawing aether, and there was no
guarantee that there would not be scarring that might allow the runes to remain
effective.

The effect of the runes on his own Source was impossible to
judge. Allowed to actually use his Source, he could use magic to examine it,
and determine how immediate his peril was. Day by day, though, as he was denied
the ability to access the aether without triggering the lightning wards, he
felt himself growing weaker. Painful though it was to deface himself with new
cuts, he knew he had to fracture the wards’ control over him.

That morning, Narsicann had come along with the jailor.
Faolen had asked to speak with Jinzan Fehr again, but the presence of the
spymaster told him that his request had been denied. He stood, pacing the small
cell as his captors approached. He had a plan concocted for this
contingency—one he had not been sure that he would get another chance to enact.

The jailor carried a tray with a bowl of stew and a mug of
what Faolen knew would be ale, likely watered down with the jailor’s own urine.
He tried to put the thought from his mind as they neared his cell. The jailor
balanced the tray in one hand as he fumbled a ring of keys free from his belt,
and unlocked Faolen’s cell.

“Fair morning. I understand you wished to see Councilor Fehr,”
Narsicann greeted him. The saccharine in his voice could have rotted a rat’s
teeth.

“I do.”

“Well, Councilor Fehr is far too busy with other important
matters, and this is really more of my little corner of Megrenn than his,
anyway. You can say to me what you would have said to him.”

As Narsicann spoke, the jailor handed the tray to Faolen,
who set down the tray and mug to begin devouring the stew at a rate much
quicker than his appetite demanded.

“I wanted to discuss the conditions of my release,” Faolen
managed, speaking without regard to the fullness of his mouth. He tried to
ignore the sour, spoiled taste of bad meat in the stew.

“There are no ‘conditions’ as you put it. When Councilor
Fehr is satisfied with your side of the bargain, he will decide your fate. It
is a family matter, and it would not be fitting for me to interfere with how he
goes about getting Anzik back, were I even inclined to.”

“Has it also possibly occurred to you that I might be
interested in furthering my career among your people, rather than returning
home?” Faolen suggested. He had thought long and hard, and decided it was the
subject he felt most likely to prolong the conversation. He continued working
at his stew as fast as his stomach would let him. The stew was leaving a foul,
slimy feeling in the back of his throat the more of it he ate.

“Hah. I suppose that if they find you had access to the
Staff of Gehlen, and traded it for your own worthless skin—no jest intended, I
assure you,” Narsicann said, glancing meaningfully down at Faolen’s exposed
forearms, and the carved runes they bore, “there might not be so welcome a
return in store for you.”

“You saw during my capture that I have useful skills. Had I
not the misfortune of bumping into Councilor Fehr, you would never have known I
had gone,” Faolen said. He fought back the urge to vomit his stew, and forced
down another mouthful.

“True, perhaps, but ultimately you failed. I might not be
the one to boast to of those skills. After all, I got the best of you,”
Narsicann teased.

Faolen finished the last spoonful. His stomach felt the
worse for it, but it seemed that the stew was content to merely protest its
location in his stomach, not seek relocation to the floor.

“How many would it have worked on? I got Councilor Fehr to
release me just for appearing as Rashan Solaran,” Faolen bragged. He eyed the
remains of the stew in the bowl, nothing but mushy trails left where the spoon
could not get everything. Suppressing a sigh, he wiped up the last of the stew
with a finger, sucking it clean.

“Well, I think it is a matter of more than just competence.
You should have saved your offer for Jinzan; he is less cautious about things
of this sort than I am. I deal in spies all day long. Trust is slow to earn,
quick to lose. You are already betraying your own kind. What makes you less
likely to do so with Megrenn?”

Narsicann meant the question rhetorically, Faolen knew, so
he just shrugged in reply. The Megrenn spymaster took it as a sign that the
usefulness of the encounter had reached an end.

Faolen picked up the mug of ale, the empty stew bowl held
awkwardly in his other hand, spoon in danger of toppling over the edge.

“I will hang on to this for a while, if you do not mind,”
Faolen said, gesturing to indicate the ale. “You can take this away, though.”
Faolen said, leaning past Narsicann to push the bowl into the jailor’s hands.

The spoon slipped …

There was a brief commotion as the spoon hit the floor.
Faolen and the jailor both bent to retrieve it. In the process, Faolen spilled
half his ale as he bumped shoulders with the jailor. When it was all resolved,
Faolen backed meekly away, hands spread wide in contrition.

“Sorry,” Faolen said, a wan smile on his face.

“Set that down, and search him,” Narsicann ordered. “Check
that he did not just sneak something from you.”

The jailor set down the bowl outside the cell. Before
searching Faolen, he checked his own pockets, seeming to find nothing amiss.
Faolen spread his arms wide, careful to keep the ale from spilling, giving
every indication of compliance. Finding nothing, the jailor gave a cursory
examination of the rest of the cell. Given how little there was, it did not
take long for him to conclude that there was no contraband present.

“Keep my offer in mind,” Faolen told Narsicann as the jailor
locked the door behind them.

“Patience. You will be of no use to anyone for a while yet,”
Narsicann replied, prompting a self-deprecating smile from Faolen.

He watched Narsicann and the jailor depart down the cell
block. He stayed silent, listening for their footsteps to fade up the stairs.

Once he was sure they were well and gone, he fished
Narsicann’s set of keys from the ale mug, wondering idly if they had improved
the taste of the beverage. It would not be long before Narsicann discovered the
theft of his keys, Faolen suspected. He tried three keys before finding the one
that unlocked his cell.

With the door open, the real key to his escape was at hand.
He drew in aether, cautiously at first. He felt one of the wards kick to life,
shocking him in the left side of his abdomen, but it did not intercept remotely
enough aether to stop what he had in mind.

With a thought, Faolen used a spell he knew back to front.
He vanished. With a few fumbling key twists along the way, he vanished from the
Megrenn dungeon as well.

* * * * * * * *

One additional perk of Rashan’s absence in the city was that
Kyrus felt free to pursue a research project of his own. Of course, that
freedom involved visiting libraries in the Tower of Contemplation with a sack,
and taking twelve additional books he did not need. It involved delegating a
number of tasks that he likely ought to have overseen personally. Lastly that
freedom also required that he ward himself up in his bedchamber, lest anyone
see what he was doing. Strange though the freedom was, it felt far safer
without the imminent threat of being summoned by the warlock.

“Dolvaen was right about one thing. One day I am likely to
overstep my bounds with Rashan. I need to unravel his game before I do so. It
might be that he is in the right. It would be so simple merely falling into the
role he sets before me,” Kyrus said aloud to himself, the freedom to voice that
sentiment was a relief. He had not realized the tension he felt in the
warlock’s presence until it was removed. That presence Rashan had was the sort
that lay over the whole of Kadris like a shroud.

Kyrus had filled his quota for poking hornets’ nests for the
day as well. Dolvaen had given him more information than he had realized. Kyrus
had fresh insight into his standing with Dolvaen, as well as the elder
sorcerer’s investigation. But Kyrus was always unsettled by confrontation.
Humiliating Dolvaen once more—in private this time, at least—took a major
potential ally, and threatened to turn him against Kyrus.

Kyrus sat at his desk, quill in hand, cross-referencing a
number of books, foremost among them
The Warlock Prophecies
. Against
that schizophrenic mass of gloom and vengeance, he pitted the forces of
Kadrin’s historians. He had six books that chronicled various aspects of the
Empire in the latter days of Rashan’s first term as warlock—anything that
covered roughly from the First Necromancer War to the Battle of the Dead Earth.
He also had a copy of
The Diplomacy of Fire and Steel
. He hoped that,
amongst all the references at hand, he would be able to assemble the prophecies
into a timeline, and place them in context. It was the sort of thing that
students found excruciating and tedious. Kyrus was finding it fascinating.