Nemesis (19 page)

This is completely freaking insane.
But it was impersonate an invisible ninja or get speared by a hundred centaurs. So I shimmied along a branch, and jumped to the next tree, grasping the branches and pulling myself higher.

Then my body reappeared, balanced in an awkward crouch on the branch.

My heart slammed into my ribs.
Don’t panic.
I was too high up to see, a good fifteen feet off the ground, hidden by the thick, wide leaves. I just had to keep moving. I was quick and light on my feet, and knew how to move so I barely disturbed the branches thanks to a childhood spent climbing into high places. But God help us if the centaur wasn’t waiting for us, or if the others had blocked the Passage…

Move!

I jumped, feet scrambling for purchase on the bark. Jumped again. Again. I hung suspended in the air, heart beating wildly. A centaur stood directly below me, palomino-patterned and armed with a crossbow bigger than me.

Keep moving, Ada.

Another jump, another tree. On the horizon, a promising streak of blue sea told me I was heading in the right direction, towards the coast. I kept one eye on the horizon as I climbed from one tree to the next, a heart-stopping dance of death fifteen feet above the earth.

Nothing to worry about… unless I fell.

I recognised the junction in the trees where we’d left Markos but there was no sign of the centaur, nor any clue as to where he’d gone. Given the proximity of three other, more hostile-looking horse-men, it was clear why. And I hadn’t heard another word from Kay. With lack of any direction, I carried on above the path we’d come by, climbing from one tree to the next. The trees grew close enough together that I never had to jump, but I cringed whenever I accidentally knocked the branches and sent autumn-coloured leaves spiralling to the ground.
This wasn’t in Alliance training.

Then I stopped short. I’d almost passed right over a small gathering of centaurs, five in total, and if any of them had glanced up, I’d have been spotted in an instant. My shaking hands held onto the branch of the tree behind a curtain of leaves, and I hung on grimly, hoping they’d go away. They were talking, in their own language–Aglaian. I couldn’t understand a word, but the tone made the skin prickle on the back of my neck.

A hand clamped over my mouth. Very good job it did, otherwise I’d have screamed when a second hand grabbed both my wrists to stop me panicking and knocking the branches. Kay’s voice was barely a breath–“It’s me.”

He’s still invisible?

“Fifty metres to the left. There’s a cave below a cliff. Markos is there.”

I nodded. Kay let go of me. A branch from a nearby tree had shifted enough for me to climb onto it. I mouthed
thanks,
even though I had no idea if Kay could see me.

Talk about communication issues, I thought wryly, heading west. Fifty metres. Totally do-able. Ignore the centaurs…

***

KAY

Somehow, impossibly, I was
still
invisible.

From high up, I saw at least fifty centaurs scattered amongst the trees. All wore leaf-crowns I recognised from Markos’s description of a disparate group wanting the throne for themselves. These centaurs wanted Markos dead, so he must be hiding.

I kept one level lower than Ada, one eye on her progress as she kept moving as I’d told her. She was pretty damn good at keeping her balance above the canopy, barely disturbing the leaves around her. But if any of the centaurs looked up at the wrong moment, she’d be in trouble. Which meant I needed to be ready to cause a distraction.

Being invisible gave me a few options, at least. I’d told Markos I’d draw their attention somewhere else. Naturally, he’d objected, but if they saw him, they could shoot him down and claim it an accident.

I did have one option, though. I
could
use magic, in such a way that wouldn’t draw attention to myself. I’d not had too many opportunities to practise, but here, it was possible to achieve that level of control. Guess I had the mage to thank for that. But I’d have to time it right, and get the centaurs as far away from Ada as possible.

Ada had managed to pass the centaurs, but we were still too far from the clearing for my liking. And their restless movements indicated they’d sensed a disturbance.

The scanner had picked up traces of magic, all right. Faint traces, but something
magi-tech
in origin had knocked down the tree. Not pure magic. It couldn’t have come from Aglaia, where the technology style was totally different. Which meant it came from offworld. Someone from another
universe
had killed the centaur king.

And the scanner couldn’t detect which world, of course. It only worked on individuals, and even that wouldn’t work here, where magic was a constant presence. What could an offworlder possibly have to gain by murdering Markos’s father? The mage had said magic was lower than it seemed. Aglaia didn’t have any resources the Alliance needed, or anyone else, for that matter. It was barely acknowledged by most worlds, and the migration rate was negligible. Nobody ever moved there, and few left, especially the centaurs.

It was needle-in-a-haystack impossible to tell who might have killed the king. No, there might be up to fifty worlds with a motive, and that was only within my limited awareness. For all I knew, every goddamned universe had a potential reason to ignite conflict on Aglaia.

Five of the centaurs had moved closer together, and Ada was near enough to reach with those crossbows no matter how fast she climbed. I had to cause a diversion. But centaurs moved quicker than any human even though they couldn’t climb.

I kept just below the canopy, moving as quickly as I dared without drawing attention. The group of five had moved close enough to talk to one another. Despite myself, I paused to listen.

“Tryfon said there’d be more.”

“This is just a sample. Be careful handling it.”

They were passing something around, but I couldn’t move further down without putting myself in range of an attack. I dropped to a lower branch, and saw Ada.

Shit.
I climbed back to the top, searching out a likely target. Swiftly, I pulled on the magic in the atmosphere and released it just as quickly. A stream of purple-red, thankfully too high for the centaurs to see, aiming for a tree a mile or so out.

The tree fell with a crash that shook the whole canopy. The centaurs turned in that direction, exclaiming curses, talking about intruders. When they started to move down the path towards it, I went the opposite way, pausing when I knew they were out of sight.

How to turn off this invisibility? I wasn’t sure how I’d even done it. There were only two ways I’d used magic before–the normal way, and…

When I’d killed, I’d shot pure magic into the target… from me. Had I somehow self-directed that power when I’d switched on the Chameleon? The device was dead, the light was out. The power was coming from me, not the atmosphere, buzzing in my skin, the way it always had.

Lustre.

I concentrated on the magic buzzing in my skin.
Turn off.
But willpower did nothing. Magic–external magic, at least–did as it pleased. And I’d only ever used magic for destruction. To kill. I didn’t know how I’d done
this.

Still, it wasn’t permanent. I had to get to Ada and Markos. I’d figure this out later. We had bigger problems to deal with now.

***

ADA

I reached the spot Kay had pointed out. The trees sloped downhill. At the bottom of the hill was a tree-free area, like a quarry, of some kind of bronze-coloured rock. The cave must be that way.

I hoped so, because to get there, I’d have to climb down to the ground.

I twisted around, making sure there were no centaurs nearby. Nothing but trees, by the look of things, but instinct wanted me to stay off the ground. Pulling myself above the canopy again, I surveyed the whole forest. We were still a fair ways from the coast, and the door to the Passages.

Crash.
I gripped the branch harder as the whole canopy shook. The source of the shaking was somewhere further back, deep in the forest. The centaurs? Or something else? Either way, my hands were slipping. I slid down the tree and dropped the last few feet, running for the cliff edge. Now the trees had thinned out, the sun’s glare hit my eyes from a dazzling blue sky, overlaid by an odd purplish tint that I realised must be the high-magic level in the atmosphere. Yet I hadn’t felt it nagging at me as I did in the Passages. Probably for the best.

I climbed slowly, testing for footholds with my toes. As my feet touched stone, the sound of a hoofbeat made me jump a foot in the air.

“Only me.” Markos stuck his head out from beneath an overhang of rock. “Good. You’re alive.”

“Kay…”

“…is busy knocking half the forest down, by the sound of it,” said Markos. “He insisted on being the one to distract the Anthos tribe.”

“He
what?”
I said. “And… the Anthos tribe?”

“They’re trying to get onto royal territory. I’ll deal with
them
later, once I’ve got you two out of Aglaia.”

“Did you know this would happen?” I asked.

“Of course not!” The centaur bristled in a way that made me take a step back. “They were breaking our laws, as it happens, but I wouldn’t have been able to report it if they were there to arrange my death. They didn’t know we were here, if it’s any consolation.”

“Not much,” said a voice from above.

“Kay?” I said, half uncertain, half relieved. “Why are you still invisible?”

“Because I can’t turn it off. Get out of the way.”

“You what?” I yelped as pain shot through my foot. “Ouch! I think you just broke my toes.”

“Sorry. I did tell you to move.”

I leaned on the wall to massage my foot. “You can’t turn it off? It was only supposed to be ten minutes.”

“I realise that,” said Kay. “It’s not the device that’s doing it, it’s me.”

“You’re invisible,” I said stupidly.

“I think we all know that, human.” Markos stared at the spot Kay’s voice had come from. “What in the name of all the gods did you do?”

“I didn’t do it on purpose!” said Kay. “I think I amplified it or something.”

“Magic-wielder,” said Markos coldly, and a shiver went down my spine. The centaur
hated
magic. Yet he must have had some idea what Kay could do.

Like those two teenagers in the warehouse.

“Is there no ‘off’ switch?” I said. “How’d you even do it in the first place?”

“I have no idea, and this isn’t the worst of it,” said Kay. “Magic knocked the tree that killed the king down, all right. But not Aglaian. An offworlder killed him.”

Markos’s expression changed from incredulous to aghast. “No.”

“It’s true. The scanner couldn’t get a reading, but it sure isn’t local. It’s offworld, for sure.”

Markos cursed loudly in Aglaian. “We can’t tell Eidora or the others. They’d have me flayed for bringing you here in the first place. We can tell the council, though. They’ll take action… but it might not stop the war.”

“Do you have a record of every offworlder who’s come here?” Kay asked. “I’m sure it’s pretty limited. It’ll have to have been within a recent time frame, and with access to the centaurs’ territory… this just doesn’t add up, though.”

It was kind of disconcerting to hear an invisible person talking to himself.

“Wait,” Kay said. “Damn.
Damn.
”

“What is it, human?” said Markos. “We can’t see you.”

“That’s the bloody point, isn’t it?
How
many invisible people are running around at any one time? Don’t you think any of them could have got through the doorway to Aglaia–to any world? Like the ravegens on Valeria.”

“Bloodrock,” I said. “Oh.
Shit.”
If that bloodrock solution had got out, literally anyone could have got hold of it and used it to sneak onto Aglaia and murder the centaur leader. Anyone, from any world.

“Yeah,” said Kay. “Of course, Cethrax is the obvious choice, given all the trouble they’ve been causing recently, but we can’t count on that. We can look into which worlds might have a motive to cause a war on Aglaia. Let’s face it, that’s the most likely reason–on the surface, anyway. We’ll have to get more people involved. The council will know more details about the precise machinations…”

“You’re making my head spin, human,” said Markos. “Tell your council, but I would wait before speaking to any Aglaian. Tryfon was dead right about the murder, but I doubt he would have considered the possibility of another world being involved. If anything, this would prove to most Aglaians that our becoming involved with other universes was a terrible error on our part.”

“Maybe it’s that distrust the killer is counting on,” said Kay. “Why target Aglaia? It’s naturally contentious
and
anti-Alliance for the most part–no offence,” he added.

“None taken,” said the centaur. “I’m as aware of the shortcomings of my own world as you are of Earth’s, human… though I never will see the appeal in
flying
.”