Dance of Destinies (The Galactic Mage Series Book 5) (14 page)

“Right,” grinned the earl, ignoring the envelope in his hand in favor of studying the scar. The neckline of her robe had shifted when she handed it to him, revealing another finger length of the wound. He’d heard that scar ran all the way to her nether parts, carved into her by the claw of a demon. He licked his lips again. “You’re very pretty, you know.”

“I’m sure that I am grateful that you say so, My Lord.” She spun and left.

He watched her go, the pendulous movement of her robes tracing the athletic body underneath. His fingers twitched, his hand shaping itself as he imagined what her buttocks might feel like to the touch. He imagined clutching it, and his breath quickened. There were other advantages of station as well, pressures that could be applied, favors called.

But the marchioness would be furious if she caught him. And she watched.

He looked down at the envelope. It was the Grand Maul’s seal. That wrinkled old demon made Vorvington twitch. Half a millennium at least, that cripple of a man had been asserting his influence in this city. Long before Her Majesty was here. He was as patient as he was old, and he had the light touch of a thief. Of a weasel perhaps. But powerful. A Five: two Ws and a T at the top, which was a lot of magic in a body so frail.

Vorvington opened the missive. It read:

The office of your dead nephew. You will find it there. The key. Follow it.

He actually laughed. Damned diviners were all the same. All those years in a wheeled chair rolling around in the darkness under the temple of Anvilwrath had made the Grand Maul even more abstruse than all the rest. But they were all the same, diviners, mystics, blathering nonsense most of the time. Often their “visions” were only explained in retrospect. He could go find anything in Thadius’ old office, an acorn or an old pot of ink, and if things shaped up well for the old priest and his prophecies, then of course
that
had been the key. If things went poorly, well, then it would be Vorvington to blame. He’d found the wrong thing. Or he’d misread it. Or he’d followed it to the wrong place.

What in nine hells did it mean to follow a key, anyway?

Nonetheless, the marchioness would be expecting him to do it, so he did. He closed up his desk and tucked the note inside his ivory case, rolling it up and stuffing it into the plans.

He wheezed a little by the time he made his way down the stairs to Thadius’ old office. In truth, he hadn’t been in the room in well over a year. Not since Thadius had died. He’d been fond of his nephew—at least, as fond as a man like Vorvington could be of a man with Thadius’ temperament. Thadius had provided him a vicarious life of seduction and depravity, stories shared over fine bottles of wine, stories of things that Vorvington was no longer allowed to do.

He sighed as he looked upon the dusty desks. There were two: one had been Thadius’ and the other had belonged to the transmuter Aderbury, whom Her Majesty was so fond of. The man was a fabulous transmuter, perhaps the most artistic of them on all Prosperion, but the poor bastard was flying
Citadel
now. Vorvington liked Aderbury well enough—he’d certainly made the earl a fortune with his exquisite talents melding stone—but, all of that was done now. Vorvington was making do with what transmuters he could find in Aderbury’s absence, and he’d brought on a great deal more numbers of blanks. They were dreadfully slow, but they worked cheap. That was the beauty of a blank: you could pay them a pittance, and they’d take it for fear they might not have enough to eat. They did all the work, and produced nearly everything, and yet they were ever willing to leave all the wealth to the nobility, satisfied to live on what they were handed back from the sale of what they themselves had made. It was a beautiful system, and Vorvington was eternally happy to have been born on the right side of it.

He rummaged through Thadius’ old desk. He had no idea what he was looking for. A key. What kind of key? A key-key, or something else? Some kind of epiphany? Some object or document that would suddenly flash an idea into his mind?

Maybe he was looking for a map. Maps had keys. Perhaps he was supposed to follow it.

He went through every drawer. There were heaps of parchments, documents, plans, and maps. None of them prompted any sort of epiphany. None of them did anything at all. He could name every project for each of them from memory.

Maybe it was something else. A book open to some prophetic page. Maybe a quill had been laid aside, and now, by the hand of fate, lay pointing at something vital somewhere in the room, or perhaps at a suggestive portion of some painting on the wall. It was just the sort of idiocy that a diviner might rely on—especially a five-hundred-year-old crippled one, rolling around in Anvilwrath’s tomb picking through the rubble of a war he did not predict, at least not in any way that counted meaningful, meaningful in the way of preventing it or even leaving time for preparation.

He looked and looked, but there was nothing. There were no pens, no knives, no ivory toothpicks. There were no revelatory lines in the dust, no fringes of carpets or angles in the arms of a damned chair … nothing that pointed conspicuously to anything in any pictures on the wall. There was nothing. Not even an actual key.

He sighed and turned to leave. He was wasting his time. Let the marchioness send her own private diviners to come do something with the Grand Maul’s message. He’d been looking for a half hour and it was nearly dinnertime. He hadn’t eaten since tea, and that was nearly three hours ago.

He looked one last time around the room. There was nothing. Not even anything on Aderbury’s desk. Although he hadn’t looked through it. The note said Thadius’ old office, not Aderbury’s.

Still, he supposed he should, just so that he didn’t get berated by the marchioness. The young priestess Klovis had stirred his loins, so he might as well try to stay on speaking terms this evening with the marchioness.

He opened the top right drawer, and lying there was a key ring with a handful of keys. Vorvington cursed. “Sons of harpies, all of them.” He took the ring and looked through all the keys. None of them were spectacular. They were simply regular old keys. One key to the building, another to the basement, one to the room on the third floor where they kept the more important designs and patent documents. There was a house key and three more smaller ones that likely unlocked chests or drawers. There was literally nothing among them remotely remarkable.

He looked around the office for a box or a trunk that he might unlock with one of the smaller keys. There were none. There were no small boxes in the other desk drawers. There was nothing.

He shook his head, his breathing heavy now for the effort of bending down and rummaging through everything. Then it occurred to him that it might be obvious after all. The damn house key. That was
the
key, and he already knew where it led. It led to Aderbury’s home.

He had to go to the records office on the second floor, but as it was his business, it was only moments before the clerk found the address. Vorvington’s driver had him at the premises in twenty minutes more.

No one answered his knock, and the key on the ring fit exactly as Vorvington figured it would. He went inside. There was no one home. He looked around, saw nothing out of the ordinary. He ran his finger over the table in the front room. It was lightly coated with a film of dust. So was the counter top in the kitchen and surfaces every where he looked. Nobody had been there in weeks.

He looked around some more, rummaging through the kitchen and the pantry. He went through closets. He went through bedrooms. He had no idea what he was looking for.

He found Aderbury’s study as he made his way down the hall. He opened the door and went in. There was a desk, a few shelves full of books, and a cabinet upon which sat a homing lizard cage. The lizards were all dead. Starved to death by the look of them, that or thirst. They were all shriveled up like dried apricots. He wondered if that was why he was there, if they were the sign he was supposed to find. Some sort of ironic clue.

It didn’t seem likely.

He went to the desk first. Aderbury’s desk at Castles, Inc. was where he’d found the key. He was prepared to check for locked drawers, but there in the center of the desk, set there prominently as if left out for him to see, was a set of plans for the strangest series of fortresses he had ever seen. Nine of them, vaguely like those hastily built in wilderness areas, depicted as having been built upon formations that looked like rock. Eight of them formed a loosely shaped circle and were joined to the ninth at the center, connected by ramparts that arced ridiculously, high humped and steep at both ends. There were other pages to the plans as well, interior plans and top views and other details pertaining to customized transmute spells required for the making of them. None of it was particularly unusual other than the design.

He looked them over and couldn’t fathom why anyone would build such a thing. Which meant they had to be what he was looking for. He scooped them up, rolled them, and stuffed them into his ivory case as well. Perhaps the evening would work out after all.

He stopped for a bouquet of enchanted parasiniums mixed with red rosebuds and a cloud of baby’s breath before returning to the TGS station near the Palace, a small, private one operated only for the nobility. He hoped the songs the parasinium blossoms sang would work nicely with the designs he’d found and a jot of wine or nine to put My Lady in the mood.

Chapter 15

R
oberto stared out over southeastern Houston toward the water. San Jacinto Bay glittered brightly in the sun, the rusting supports of an old bridge rising from it like giant needles pushed through blue fabric. Pleasure boats stitched white threads across the water, and Roberto sighed as he thought about what might lie beneath them as they sailed leisurely along. There’d been an island there once, Alexander Island, slowly eroding over time and finally drowned when the climate changed a half millennium or so ago. If he hadn’t had his hands so full—if the Queen’s inexplicable demands that he work the Goblin Tea business “in the name of long-term security” didn’t swamp his days, and if the fact that his best friend in the world wasn’t MIA on some damn alien ship didn’t swamp his every waking thought—then he might have relished the idea of being out there on one of those boats too. Maybe throw on some diving gear and go see if he could find some prewar artifacts. He blew out another long breath. The view from his sixty-fifth-floor office suite was spectacular, but today, like the rest of the last thirteen days, the scenery couldn’t cut through his mood.

He turned back into the room and shook his head. “It’s bullshit,” he said. “I can’t believe we are here doing this crap right now. Those bastards up on Yellow Fire, assuming they even are still on Yellow Fire, could be doing anything to Orli and Altin right now. It’s been
two
freaking weeks! I’m telling you, I’m having a really hard time getting my head around why Her Majesty insists this Goblin Tea empire is a priority. I’ve already got a hundred and sixteen stores open. I literally am selling every coffee bean I’ve contracted for. And she wants me to get more and do more? ‘Deal with anyone you have to,’ she said. I can’t even deal with my contractors, much less those shady bastards out of Murdoc Bay. And there’s plenty more of those kind here too. Between taxes, permitting, and bribes, I can’t get my infrastructure to grow fast enough to keep up with supply or demand.” He jerked his hand in the direction of the computer terminals at which Deeqa and Allen Greenfeld, the man he’d made CFO to help hold the business together, worked. “We’re making more money than you guys can even count on two computers, and it’s still not enough. How greedy can she possibly be?”

“You made the deal with the devil, Captain. Best learn to like the scent of brimstone,” Deeqa said. Her smooth cheeks rounded with the ensuing smile. “But it’s not so bad when you mix in the sweet smell of our coffee. And it pays handsomely.” That last bit was why she’d signed on, after all.

Deeqa Daar was Roberto’s copilot on the
Glistening Lady
, but she had rapidly become a crucial business partner too. He’d stolen her from a miserable job on a rusty old freight ship, and he considered that one of the best negotiations he’d ever made. Not only could she fly the hell out of a spaceship, she had a great mind for business and an even greater one for … navigating the decidedly cloudy spaces between right and wrong. She was as comfortable in a bar fight as a boardroom, and when it came to tax codes, Roberto figured she was at least a thousand times smarter than he was. Between her and Allen, the business was making money hand over fist. And he was fine with that.

“Besides,” Deeqa went on, “Her Majesty said she’d talk to Director Bahri and get some people out there as soon as possible. You worry too much. Orli and Sir Altin will be fine.”

“Yeah, that’s what she said, but ‘as soon as possible’ in Queen time doesn’t mean the same thing as it does to regular people. And I don’t like waiting.” Roberto turned back to the window and stared out again. “I swear, if anything happens to Orli … well, I’m just saying. Her Majesty better not screw around.”

“Or what? Are you going to fly the
Lady
in there, guns blazing, and … what?” She shook her head, and the light from her computer screen glinted up and down the stack of gold rings that bound up a stem and bushy tuft of her hair, a Qurac, she called it, after a sacred tree of her homeland.