Scar Felice (The Fourth Age of Shanakan Book 3) (22 page)

She looked towards the school, and for a time she watched the guards moving in regular patterns around the fence. A wagon approached the gate, and was permitted to enter, but only after the drover had stepped down and walked back towards the village. One of the guards climbed up to the drover’s seat and guided in inside the fence. The gate was closed again and the wagon was searched, then taken up and through the archway. She saw no sign of life other than the guards, so the candidates must all be confined to their rooms.

Somewhere up there, in one of those buildings, was Karnack. She had not been so close since the night that Todric had died, and she searched inside herself for what it was that she felt. She was surprised to find no anger, no pain. Everything inside her was reduced to symbols, like so many numbers stacked up on a balance sheet. But she could not make it right because there was so much that she did not know. In her system, back in East Scar there had been profit and loss, expense and income, but now the world did not divide into two simple columns, and she could not even give some of them meaningful names.  Were the Ekloi an asset or a liability? Could the Faer Karan be used to turn a profit? And what kind of profit? Nothing seemed to be clear cut any more. For a trader, life was simple. If at the end of the day there was more money in your pocket, then that was a measure of success. Home, too, had been simple. She loved her family and they loved her. There was no question to be answered. Other people did not matter. To be sure you treated them fairly and expected the same in return, you smiled and they smiled, but it was all the same if they did not. Now the actions of strangers had become critical, a matter of life and death, so that when they smiled you needed to know if they were honest, if they meant what they said, or if some other desire drove them to deceive.

“Your thoughts, Felice?”

Sabra had come up quietly and sat beside her. She had not heard her. The lieutenant offered her a cup of jaro, which she accepted.

“Are my own,” she replied.

“Then I will tell you mine.” Sabra said.

“As you wish.”

“You story of the knife tells me much, but makes nothing clear. I thought you were playing with it, the knife, I mean, back at White Rock when we sat at table in the colonel’s rooms. I saw you spin it, and I saw it point to Alder. That was when something began between you. What did you ask the knife to find?”

“A better travelled person,” she replied. The words were true, in a way, but she had spoken in a facetious tone.

“Something happened in the town the day before. You were shaken when you came back. You were worried. The colonel saw it. That’s why she asked me to watch you. You were looking for something, using that knife, and you found it in Alder, and he knew that you had, somehow. I have no idea what you found, why you found it, or what you and Alder did in the town the next day, but it doesn’t matter.”

“Please don’t ask me, Ennis,” she used Sabra’s given name for the first time. It was a way of drawing them together, asking her to trust.

“I have no questions,” Sabra said. “I know that there will be no answers. I just want you to know that I see things, that I am no fool, and that my bow and blade are at your service, should you need them.”

“Thank you.” She felt grateful, and relieved that Sabra did not press her with questions. The only answers that she could give were uncertain poisons to her certain world, words that would bring fear and danger and no clear course of action. Indeed, she had no clear course herself. She had volunteered to find the killer, but if it was, as she suspected, a Faer Karani that they sought, then what purpose would that serve? Could Hekman arrest it? Her hope must lie with the Mage Lord. He was here. He had banished the Faer Karan once, and must do it again.

They drank jaro again, and Felice wondered what message Hekman would bring to her tomorrow.

Felice had barely finished breakfast, a hurried handful of bread and cheese eaten in a corner of the guard room, when Hekman appeared again. He’d been gone when she awoke – to the school, the guard officer behind the desk had told her.

“Come with me,” he said.

She licked the last crumbs from her fingers and hurried to follow him. He walked quickly for such a small man, and he was already outside by the time she reached his side.

“You have the knife?” he asked.

“Yes.”

He said no more, and in a moment she realised that they were walking towards the school, towards the fence and the gate. She was overcome by a sudden feeling of apprehension. She was certain that she was being taken to meet the Mage Lord, the magical figure that ruled the entire world, the father of justice, the conqueror of the Faer Karan. But there were things that he did not know, and she was afraid that he would discover.

The fence was made from the trunks of trees, driven into the ground and tied together with reeds. The gaps between the stripped trunks was no more than six inches, and even cutting away the reeds would not allow anything bigger than a cat to enter. The gates were made in a similar way, but swung on three huge cast iron hinges. The real strength, though, was in the guards who patrolled, who watched every approach, and who watched them now.

There were seven men at the gate. Three stood on the outside, prepared to challenge and inspect any who approached, and two more stood within, ready to open the gate or bar it again should any danger arise. Two further guards stood on low platforms either side of the opening, bows in their hands.

One of the three, a sergeant, stepped forwards as they approached.

“Is this the one, my lord?” he asked.

“Yes, Taf,” Hekman replied. He used the man’s given name, a familiarity that she had not seen among the guard, but the sergeant seemed easy with it. There was trust here, and Hekman had been in Woodside for a couple of days at best. That was impressive.

“Do we need to search her?”

“No. She carries a knife, but that is known, and it is required.”

“Very well, my lord.” The man signalled those behind the gate and it was swung slowly open. They passed through and it was closed again. They walked on.

“Have there been other killings since the fence was built?” Felice asked.

“None, but it has been completed for only a day. If the pattern is followed there will be another death tonight.”

“There is a pattern?”

“Usually there is a pattern. When a man kills many others he learns from each death, and he develops a method. It allows us to predict what they will do to a small extent. We can also learn much about the killer by the way in which he kills, the weapon that is used, the way the body is left. Many things can give us information.”

“So what do you know about this killer?”

“Nothing is certain, of course, but we guess that it is a man, right handed, perhaps a little taller than average. He does not know his victims. He kills in an efficient way, without passion, and walks away as soon as the deed is done. Some killers linger, but not this man. He kills almost like an assassin, for a purpose.”

“He is killing those who would become mages.”

“That was the Mage Lord’s first thought, and with only two dead it still seems most likely. The two had little in common, other than they showed promise.”

A Faer Karan would fit such a picture, especially if one had taken flesh.

Now they approached the first of the buildings, and for the first time she could see clearly what had been built here. There were four outer buildings, each curved so that between them they formed a huge broken circle around the central tower. Each was over a hundred paces in length and two rooms high, the inside, facing the centre, was pierced at regular intervals by doorways, and the whole was a mass of small windows that looked inwards and outwards. Rooms, she guessed, and this would be where the candidates were being kept. She noted a guard at each doorway. Karnack was in one of those rooms.

The space between the outer buildings and the inner was a lattice of gravel pathways that cut across a well kept lawn, decorated here and there with fruit trees. It seemed that every doorway was connected directly to the nearest archway in the central building, and as they approached that, she could see that it was a hollow circle, and the garden that she had glimpsed before was a full eighty paces across, with fountains, seats, flowers, a pool in which slow fish swam. It was akin to a huge version of Jem’s garden in Pek. At any other time she would have wanted to linger here, to enjoy the colours and the sounds, but now she was focussed on what she would say, and how she could avoid betraying the secrets that she had sworn to keep. She wondered if there would be a Shan present. She had never seen one, but if Alder was true and the Shan already knew about the Ekloi, then she had nothing to fear.

There were four great doors that led from the garden into the building itself. Each was guarded, but when Hekman approached one of them the guard simply nodded to him, and they passed through. He was still walking quickly, still in silence, and she walked at his heels, obedient like a dog. It was a wry thought. Hekman ignored a corridor that seemed to circle the building just within the doorway, and they walked down a whitewashed passageway towards the outside of the structure. After a few paced they passed another circular corridor, and glancing down it she could see that there were many doors on one side, towards the outer skin. At the end of the corridor they climbed stairs, a broad sweeping flight that led them to a huge pair of double doors and another circular passage, this time ringing the outside of the building. She could see windows, and glimpses of the outer structures and the fence. They carried on up.

This building was vast. She could get lost within it. It must be hundreds of paces around, and full of doorways.

Eventually they came to a simple, single door. It was painted grey, like many of the other doors, and it was unguarded. Here Hekman stopped and knocked quietly. A voice within bid them enter.

There were two men inside the room, and the Faer Karani, Borbonil. They sat around a table upon which lay the remains of a simple but adequate breakfast. Borbonil stood, as seemed to be his custom, and the two men sat. One of them slouched in his chair with his long legs stretched out under the table. He had close cropped sandy hair with perhaps the slightest hint of grey, and he was tall and thin. The other man was shorter, and more elaborately dressed in green and black. He rested one foot on the table, clad in a highly polished black boot.

All eyes were turned on her when they entered the room.

“My Lord,” Hekman said. “May I present the trader Felice Caledon san Marcos of East Scar.”

The well dressed man put his boot back on the floor and sat upright.

“I am Serhan,” he said. No title, she noted. “This is General Grand, and you’ve met Borbonil I believe.”

She bowed. “Yes, my lord.”

“I am pleased to meet you at last, Felice,” he said. “You have had some considerable excitement since you left Yasu, I understand?”

“I could have done without it,” she replied. She saw the general raise an eyebrow at her choice not to use the honorific, but Serhan smiled and leaned back in his chair again.

“So you think you can help our hunter find his quarry?” He certainly took a straight line to where he wanted to be.

“Yes, I believe so.”

“With a knife? May I see it?”

She drew pathfinder out of her pocket and laid it carefully on the table with the blade pointed towards herself. She had a moment of doubt as she put it down, but she quickly put doubt aside. The Mage Lord would not take her magical blade from her. As she studied him she felt certain that he was fair and honest. She could see that he was confident, sure of himself, and why not? He was the Mage Lord. Those that did not love him for what he had done respected him, even feared him, if they had good cause, for the power that he wielded. What impressed her most was that those around him did not seem afraid. They relaxed in his company. It was a good sign that they did not fear a man with so much power.

He looked closely at the knife before picking it up, tracing the etching on the blade with a finger. It was almost impossible not to do this. The quality of the work insisted that you believe it with your hands as much as your eyes.

“A fine piece. It certainly looks old enough.” He showed the blade to Grand, but Felice saw him look up to Borbonil. The Faer Karani nodded, almost imperceptibly.

“It’s incredible,” the general said, touching the blade himself. “Nobody alive today could do this work.”

Serhan took the knife back and held it between both his hands. He closed his eyes and became very still, and the room became still. It was almost as though the others did not dare breathe, and Felice realised that she was seeing magic, and yet seeing nothing at all. Serhan frowned slightly, as though with concentration, and then he smiled. He spoke, but not to anyone in the room, and so quietly that she could not make out a word. It went on for some time, and nobody dared to interrupt. Just for a moment Felice thought that she could hear a second voice, faint and higher pitched, filling in the gaps between Serhan’s words.

When he stopped it seemed as though everyone drew a breath again. He put the knife back down on the table and pushed it back towards Felice.

“You were talking to her,” Felice said, realising as she spoke that she was speaking out of turn, but it didn’t seem to bother Serhan.

“Yes,” he said.

“Her?” General Grand seemed puzzled.

“Yes, Darius, it’s one of Corderan’s tricks. This piece was made by him. Borbonil recognised it when he first saw it. It was a trick of the old mage to imprison a portion of a person’s essence within an artefact. This was an early attempt, and he has caught almost the entire person – a terrible thing, really. A child, her name was Emina, has been imprisoned within for nearly five hundred years, but it is a most gentle prison.”

“How do you mean?”

“Well, she was a sickly child, a mute, born with a weakness that made her unable to walk more than a few steps without great pain. Most of all she wanted to see her world, and she was bought maps, by her parents perhaps. She studied these and imagined the places, and it was her dearest wish to see them. She was brought to Corderan that he might heal her. She was dying by then, but the mage chose instead to grant her wish. He made her into an Aethelan, an invisible, insubstantial, winged creature, and tied her to the knife so that she might fly and see the whole world, for as long as the knife was unbroken. And so she has done for all these years.”

“So how did you speak with her if she is mute?” Felice asked. “I heard her.”

“You
heard
her?” The Mage Lord seemed surprised.

“I thought so, my lord,” she said, suddenly defensive again. “I heard a noise that sounded like a voice, but it was very faint. It could have been anything.”

Serhan was unconvinced. “You heard,” he said. “I gave her a voice.”

Felice was embarrassed, but she could not say why. The general studied her as though she was some knot that he wished to unpick, his eyes not leaving her face as though he would find something there that would reveal an answer to his unspoken question. Was she a threat? None at all, she wanted to say. How could I be?

“You have other business here, I am told.” Serhan’s words snapped her back to the problem at hand.

“Yes. Yes, My Lord. I have come half way across the world to see justice done. My brother’s killer is here. I have a warrant.” She produced it again. It looked somewhat tattered and browned with use by now, especially in such fine company.

“Hekman?”

“The crime is the murder of trader Todric Caledon of East Scar, which took place in the town of Yasu. The warrant is properly sworn out. The accused is former sergeant, now candidate, Peet Karnack.”

Serhan closed his eyes for a moment. “I remember him. Do you remember him, Darius?”

“I think so. He was the one with the hands, yes?”

She wondered what he meant by that. She had seen nothing remarkable about his hands.

“Yes.” Serhan turned back to Felice. “Once you have assisted Sam we will see about justice for your brother, Felice. Karnack will not be leaving here before then, you may rest assured of that.”

Now there remained the problem of her suspicions. She had volunteered to help Hekman, and knew that Pathfinder could find the killer, but what use would that be if it was a Faer Karani?  She would simply be sacrificing herself and Hekman. She did not expect such a powerful creature to simply surrender and allow itself to be led away in chains. She had to be creative, to put together a chain of reasoning that would be credible. She had heard something in street talk, idle words among the gossips of East Scar and Yasu, and again when people had talked about the calling, and she used it now, thinking on her feet.

“My Lord, I fear that the one we seek may not easily be captured.”

“Indeed? I will send enough guards with you to capture any ten men.” The Mage Lord sounded a little indulgent, a shade condescending, and that gave her strength.

“May the killer not be Faer Karan, My Lord?”