City of Light (The Traveler's Gate Trilogy) (15 page)

“The smoke makes things too easy,” Valin said. “It's like cheating. How are you ever supposed to have an even match with anyone when you're appearing and disappearing like that?”

Kai wagged a finger at his former master. “Tsk, tsk, tsk. It's thinking like that kept you from killing the Damascan King. You had to wait for an Elysian Traveler to do your work for you.”

“What are you doing here?” Indirial cut in roughly, staring at Valin.

Valin gave him an ironic smile. “It looks like the Eldest had further plans for me, and dying at the end of a Ragnarus blade was not in them.”

Indirial said something low and harsh in a language Simon didn't understand, but he would have bet Azura that it was a curse. “What has he done now? I should have ended him years ago.”

Indirial wore such a dark look, as though he could hardly hold himself back from tearing out Valin's throat, that it made Simon uncomfortable. Indirial wasn't supposed to be vengeful or cruel, he was supposed to stay calm and humorous even in front of an enemy.

Yes, because everyone stays the same, all the time,
Otoku sent.
Indirial and Valin have a long and painful history. He's only human. He would need the patience of a doll to be able to smile right now.

The patience...of a doll.

That's right.

You mean you.

Otoku made a shocked sound.
I can't believe you haven't noticed. My sisters and I are the very avatars of patience and humility.

Sometimes, he couldn't tell when she was joking.

Kai nodded to Simon. “It seems that the little mouse has misplaced his cheese.”

Indirial squeezed his eyes shut. “What are you talking about, Kai?”

“My mask,” Simon put in. “I had it when I came into the room, I know I did, but it's gone now.”

“You didn't give it to Olissa, did you?” Indirial asked. He opened his eyes and looked at Simon, deliberately turning away from Valin and Kai. “She's been working on the new versions, and she's mentioned more than once that she could use the prototype.”

Simon imagined thirteen Valinhall Travelers with masks like his, and his stomach twisted. “She's making copies? And you're okay with it?”

“I decided not to fight it,” Indirial said. “It looks like Valinhall will soon have a mask among its weapons, no matter what I do. And who am I to stand in front of progress?” He shot a glance over at Valin, and his face darkened again. “This isn't the first time I’ve failed to stop one of the Eldest Nye’s plans.”

Simon didn't see how Olissa could have possibly taken the mask from him while he was here in the graveyard, but he had nothing else to try. “Is she in the workshop, then?”

Indirial shook his head. “New room. Kai, will you show him the way?”

“I dash, I run, I positively
leap
to obey.” Kai swept the other man a mocking bow. “But where, dare I ask, will you be?”

The Overlord looked down on the Wanderer, who met his gaze with an amused smile. “I have a few questions to ask our founder. And then Simon and I have business with the Queen.”

“Please, leave him in one piece,” Kai said, as he walked over to Simon. “The graveyard has never known a better training dummy.”

The door to the graveyard swung shut behind Simon and Kai, cutting off Valin's mocking laughter.

Wordlessly, Kai held out one hand.

Let him touch me,
Otoku said,
and you will beg the Nye to choke you in your sleep.

***

They arrived in the workshop a few minutes later, Simon carrying Otoku in both hands, and Kai looking like he was on the verge of tears. The communication crystal floated after them like a lonely bird, having shouted out its message two or three times on the trip through the House. Twice now, Kai had threatened to force-feed the stone to Simon if he didn't release Otoku. To which Otoku had responded that she would rather be carried off by a swarm of cockroaches, leading Kai into bouts of dramatic wailing.

The sight of the workshop's cast-iron door was an indescribable relief.

Caius Agnos stood inside the workshop, carrying a box overflowing with odds and ends: gears, springs, metal wire, rolls of cloth, and tiny wooden cups practically spilled over the top. Caius, Olissa's husband, was a friendly-looking balding man who permanently wore a blacksmith's leather apron. His bulging gut and warm smile made him look like an innkeeper, but his arms were corded with muscle.

“Good to see you both. It's been a while since I've seen you, Simon. Is the Queen keeping you busy?”

“She called me now, actually,” Simon said, only a second before:

“SIMON, SON OF KALMAN, REPORT TO THE QUEEN FOR ASSIGNMENT...”

Caius almost dropped his box. While Simon waited for the crystal to finish shouting, he took a look around the workshop. It had changed since he had last seen it, when it had been filled with cluttered boxes and dusty tables. Now, workbenches rested against each of the walls, covered neatly with an array of tools and half-finished projects. One rack on the wall held an array of hammers, arranged by size, and a tray on one of the workbenches showed a variety of gold ingots.

The copper shelves were a recent addition, nailed to the walls slightly above head-height, and they held a number of labeled boxes—the labels advertised everything from 'Metal Scraps’ to 'Blood Jars' to simply 'Exciting!'

All in all, it looked like a professional craftsman's organized shop, now, rather than an enthusiastic collector's old woodshed.

The floating crystal finally stopped yelling.

“I guess the Queen doesn't like waiting on you, does she?” Caius asked, chuckling nervously.

“No, it keeps doing that,” Simon said. “You get used to it. Almost.”

Kai moved toward one wall, placing his hand against the bare stone in between two benches. “I'm entranced by your witty repartee, but we're not here to chat. Open the gallery, would you please?”

“Oh, yes, of course.” Caius bustled over to a table, deposited his box of raw materials, then moved to the wall beside Kai. There was an iron rod sticking out of the wall at an odd angle; it had blended in so well with the tools a few inches away that Simon had hardly noticed it.

“This is one of my wife's favorite innovations,” Caius said, smiling proudly. “Are you ready?”

Caius heaved the lever down, and the bare wall swung away from Kai's hand.

The next room was largely bare, and looked half-finished. He was looking down a long rectangle, like a hallway, with a chest-high counter running down both of the side walls. It looked almost like a tavern bar: the counters were smooth and polished, made of dark fine-grained wood, and there was a three-legged wooden stool every few feet. The walls looked like they were made of white plaster, and a long rug softened the stone floor stretching from the workshop door to the far wall.

Instead of drinks, the bars were covered in some of the same debris that Caius had been carrying in his boxes. Ingots of iron, plates of steel, tiny hammers, and huge tongs lay strewn on the polished wood surfaces.

On the walls, above the counters, hung a series of copper racks. They looked like elaborate hooks, designed to suspend paintings, and there were six racks on these walls. Since there were twelve of them, Simon would have thought the racks were backup storage for the wooden sword racks in the entry hall, designed to hold the Dragon's Fangs. But not only were these mounts far too small to hold a sword, four of the slots were occupied.

On his left, running down the wall, four masks hung on the wall in a row. It was easy to see the similarities between these masks and his: one half was dark, the other light, with two squared-off eye slits and no opening for the mouth. However, no one would mistake his mask for one of these. The light side wasn't quite the same mirror-bright polished steel of a Dragon's Fang, and the dark half didn't look like the rough, solid black of the wrought iron in Simon's. Now that he was looking at them more carefully, he noticed that the join in the middle, where the two halves met, was smooth and straight, unlike his own, which showed a jagged, uneven, sinuous line where two metals had been melted and joined together.

The steel half of these masks was almost pale, like it had been whitened somehow, and the iron half looked more dark gray than black. While Simon's mask looked like a rough-forged weapon, like it could itself be used to kill someone, these seemed like the delicate products of a craftsman.

He had no doubt that they were much deadlier than they looked.

Two of the stools in the room were occupied. Andra Agnos, the youngest Valinhall Traveler and the daughter of Olissa and Caius, brightened when Simon entered the room. She was fourteen—she had passed her latest birthday in the House—and she had been born with the same naturally tan skin and blond hair that marked Alin as part villager and part Damascan. She sat at a stool with a device in front of her: like a small hammer with a squared off tip, only the hammer was welded into some sort of metal frame. There was a half-finished mask sitting underneath the hammer's head, clamped into place by a vice at the bottom. The hammer's sharpened head was poised over the mask, leading Simon to believe that the machine was designed to punch eye slits in the metal.

Andra's brother, Lycus, sat at the stool next to her. He had turned eleven in the House, and unlike his older sister, he stared at his machine with focused intensity. He had to stand up and lean all of his body weight on the handle in order to push the machine down, pushing a hole into the metal with a sharp
thunk
.

Unlike Andra, who usually seemed happy to see Simon, Lycus wouldn’t look Simon in the eye.

Simon couldn't blame the boy for that. Lycus had seen Simon kill people that the Agnos family considered friends. Maybe he would grow to understand. Maybe not.

Olissa Agnos had her auburn hair pulled back and tied behind her neck. She had pushed a pair of leather-banded goggles up her forehead, and she wore a thick pair of work gloves. Since the opening of the workshop, which sometimes felt like an age ago, Olissa had perpetual smudges of ash on her face.

At the moment, she was rubbing an eyeless mask down with a rag. Then she looked up and saw Simon and Kai enter. Olissa smiled and dipped into a mocking curtsy.

“Simon, Master Kai, allow me to introduce the gallery.”

Simon had expected her to be making more masks, so the sight of them shouldn’t have hit him as hard as it did. He already had enough trouble trying to decide when to use the mask and when to hold back. The feeling of it was addictive, overpowering. So far he had managed to restrain himself except in open combat with an Incarnation, but it was a struggle each time. The more masks, and the more people who had them, the greater the chance that someone would hold on a little too long. Then there would be another Valinhall Incarnation running around, one that he would have to stop. Again.

“Four faces hung on a wall,” Kai said softly. “I wonder which of them is me?”

Olissa looked at Simon, who shook his head. “It’s best not to question him. Mistress Agnos, could you tell me about the masks?”

Olissa held the incomplete, eyeless mask up to the light for inspection. “Happy to explain,” she began.

“SIMON, SON OF KALMAN, REPORT TO—”

With a tinkling sound like a breaking bottle, the crystal shattered.

Simon wasn’t holding the Nye essence, so he didn’t see Andra move. One second she was sitting on a stool, trying to punch holes in a metal mask, and the next instant she was beside him, her Dragon’s Fang drawn, standing in a falling cloud of crystal dust.

She looked at him, eyes wide. “What
was
that thing?”

“That was the Queen’s expensive communications crystal,” Simon replied. “Nice job. Now I can tell her honestly that I wasn’t the one who broke it.”

Otoku let out a sigh of pure relief.
Someone finally shut that thing up. When you die, try to make sure that she picks up Azura. I could work with her.

She’s already got a Dragon’s Fang,
Simon sent.
And who says I’m going to die?

It’s not a risky bet.

Andra’s eyes widened even further, and she stared at the glittering shards on the ground. “She’s not going to make me pay for it, is she?”

“You shouldn’t swing your sword around like that,” Lycus said. “That’s why you keep breaking things.”

Simon waved a hand at Andra. “Don’t worry, Leah can afford it. More importantly, Mistress Agnos, can you tell me about the mask?”

Olissa straightened, wearing a proud smile. “Why, yes I can. I learned a lot when I put together your mask, you know, but I found all
sorts
of fascinating things trying to make one from scratch. Valinhall has its own source of power, you know. Its own energy. It’s like…”

She searched around the gallery before she spied a small glass vial, and she snatched it off the counter and held it up. It was full of thick, yellow-gold oil.

“It’s like this bottle of olive oil,” she announced.

Andra giggled, but Lycus shushed her.

“In its natural state, the power of Valinhall is inaccessible,” Olissa went on. “It’s there, but it can’t help us. Like a bunch of olives before they’re pressed.”

“You can eat olives,” Andra pointed out. Her mother ignored her.

“Now, the power needs three things so that we can use it: it needs to be re-forged into a new shape, it needs a room, and it needs a guardian. It’s basically the same process as making olive oil.”

“Those fearsome olive oil guardians,” Andra whispered.

“Olives need to be pressed, that is, formed into a new shape. That’s what happens when we make a new tool, like this mask.” She held up her unfinished mask, holding it next to the bottle of oil. “We’re giving it a purpose by processing the power into a state in which it can be used.”

She paused and looked at Andra, as if waiting for a comment.

Andra held up empty hands, so Olissa went on. “Now, what would happen if we didn’t have a bottle around this oil?”

“It would escape?” Andra suggested.

“It would spill everywhere,” Simon said, feeling like an idiot for answering such an obvious question.