The Lawkeeper of Samara (The Fourth Age of Shanakan Book 2) (28 page)

“Aye, she might at that,” Sam agreed.

They left him alone in the room, pulling the door closed behind them. Sam waited, and the room, it seemed, waited too. He closed his eyes and tried to imagine the room full, but full of what? He thought of a desk, with papers, the sort of secret papers that he’d like to find, papers with lists of names, a history of evil. He thought of chains and cages. Perhaps there would be a prisoner, straw on the floor like a cell. It could be a library, shelves filled with incriminating texts.

Perhaps there were other people here. The thought troubled him, and he drew his short sword and laid it across his thighs. The one thing that he was certain Delantic would want to hide was his group, his friends, his fellow killers. They could be all around him.

Sam opened his eyes, but there was nothing – just white walls and bare boards. He closed his eyes again. Somewhere in the house he could hear footsteps. That would be upstairs, or perhaps in the entrance hall where two lawkeepers stood guard. They would be talking to one another to pass the time.

But it wasn’t men speaking. The voice was too high, though he couldn’t make out the words. That would be Arla and Ella Saine. The voice sounded agitated, like someone shouting.

Sam stood up and went to the door. He opened it and leaned out.

“Arla?”

She appeared at the top of the stairs. “Chief?”

“Are you two arguing?”

“No.”

“No raised voices?”

“No. We weren’t even speaking. Councillor Saine is reading.” Sam could see the frown on her face.

“Never mind,” he said. He went back into the room and sat on the chair again. If it hadn’t been Arla it might have been someone out on the street, but he was at the back of the house, and the garden was big enough to exclude nearby sounds. He closed his eyes and listened again. At first there was nothing. He heard a gust of wind rattle the window, a floor board creak, a word spoken by one of the lawmakers in the hall, perhaps wondering at what he had just done.

There it was again, like a woman shouting in a distant room, almost too quiet to hear. He focussed on it, trying to make out the words, but the voice faded back to nothing. He stood yet again and went to the door.

“Does this house have a basement?” he asked.

“No, Chief,” one of the lawkeepers replied.

No basement. He had whittled away the alternatives, and what remained was almost impossible, or at least quite magical. There was someone else in the empty room. He walked back inside and looked around once more. He wondered if whoever was here, woman or child perhaps, could be aware of him, could see and hear him, a ghost from the real world.

“I will be back,” he said to the empty room. “I will bring help. You are not forgotten.”

It was all that he could do. He picked up the chair and took it back out into the hall. If there was another room, a hidden room with people and furniture then he could not touch it, but the chair, and Sam when he sat in it, were intrusions. If that room came back the chair might be in the way of something. For all that he wished it, he could change nothing; but Serhan, the mage lord, could.

He walked upstairs to where Ella Saine had settled behind Delantic’s desk. Arla was sitting in the window looking out, her bow resting on one knee.

“Anything?” he asked.

“There’s a lot here,” Ella said. “But it should yield something, given time. I’m compiling a list of all the people Delantic traded with, those he traded beside.”

“Beside?”

“Sometimes a deal is too big for one trader, so he makes an agreement with another, or with a raft of others to buy at a price and sell at a price, or to buy and owe a debt. It’s common practice, but Delantic’s trades were odd.”

“Hardly a surprise,” Arla commented from the window.

Ella turned over a couple of pages. “Most of his trades were what you might expect,” she said. “He bought and sold goods like any trader, though he wasn’t really very good at it, but there are some small transactions that don’t fit.”

“What do you mean?”

“Here,” Ella said, putting a finger on the paper. “He buys five hens, no cost – apparently he got them for nothing, and yet he sells two of them on for twenty gold apiece. A hen’s not worth twenty copper.”

Sam glanced across at Arla and they shared a look. It was odd that clever people could look straight past something that was so obvious.

“Hens aren’t hens,” he said.

Ella looked up. “Of course hens are hens,” she said. “They’re not goats.”

“Children,” Sam said. “Delantic and his friends were trading children.” When he saw the look on Ella’s face he wished he hadn’t been so blunt. Sam had known people in Gulltown who would have sold their children for five silver, but he’d bet  that Ella had never been in that world.

“That’s monstrous,” she said, but a moment later shook her head. “But no more so than the killings.” She sighed. “I must seem foolish to you. I see all this around me,” she gestured to the elegant room and its fine furnishings, “and I think Delantic must be a civilised man. How can someone who lives like this be so depraved?”

“You can’t know a man by his clothes or his house, councillor” Arla said. It was a guard thing to say. Guards had no houses and all wore the same clothes, Sam knew, and Arla was still very much bound to that world. It was true, though. As much as he’d thought he’d known his neighbours in Gulltown many had changed their colours when the troubles began. His own point of view was that you could never really know anyone. You trusted, but trust was a throw of the dice every time it mattered.

“We should go back to the law house,” Sam said.

“There’s a lot more of this to go through.” Ella lifted an uneven wad of paper.

“Bring it with you. I want to be back there when the mage lord returns.”

It took Ella a few minutes to find a box large enough to hold the bulk of Delantic’s papers, and then Sam had to volunteer to carry it, heavy as it was. He knew Arla was better with sword or bow than he would ever be, and he could hardly have let Ella struggle all the way back to the law house under the weight.

*

It was just after midday when a black door opened in the law house. Sam was sitting in his office, waiting. He’d been waiting for more than an hour, looking out of his window and trying to make sense of everything that had happened, trying to plan. The first roil of black smoke caught the corner of his eye and he turned to face the door as it solidified.

Gilan stepped through, which was a relief. Sam thought he might have lost the big man, but here he was, grim faced but not so much that it bespoke disaster.

“Chief,” he said.

Diara followed him through, the office becoming a little more crowded.

“We lost Ifan,” Gilan said.

“Talis, too,” Sam replied, and they shared a mutual moment. It was not exactly grief, but a sombre acknowledgement that those who might have become friends were gone. Neither of them had known their colleagues well enough to miss them more than that.

Serhan stepped through the door, and there was barely room for the four of them. It was Diara that backed out into the corridor.

“What news?” Sam asked as the portal faded.

“Delantic is dead,” Serhan told him with some satisfaction. “Gilan and Diara took him, and we have a name from the trader in Pek, and more than that, we have an opportunity to trap at least one more. Delantic arranged a meeting with another of his brethren.”

Sam nodded. “Someone has taken the blue crystal,” he said.

“From the law house?” Gilan asked. He was clearly taken aback.

“Delantic’s friends have eyes here, and hands too it seems. They have known too much of what we do.”

“A traitor.” The big man’s face clouded again.

It was a statement of the obvious, but in the quiet moment that followed Sam spoke. “My lord, there is something in Delantic’s house that you should see.”

Serhan turned and studied Sam. “Yes,” he said. “Yes, I thought there might be. What did you find?”

“An empty room…”

“But not empty,” Serhan said.

Sam nodded. It was almost as though Serhan heard his words before he spoke them. “I think there is someone imprisoned there,” he said.

“Then we must see if we can free them.” The mage lord turned to the door, hesitated and turned back. “The traitor,” he said. “Because we know of him – or her – their existence is an advantage. It may be that we can resolve this whole affair by tomorrow morning, but no-one must speak of it. If he gets wind that we know he will run.”

“You trust us, then?” Gilan asked.

“Aye, I trust you three and more besides, but we will know for certain soon enough. I will bring a friend from Cabarissa, and there will be no more lying.”

A Shan. Serhan would bring a Shan to Samara. Sam remembered how much he had wanted that, and the remembering seemed a distant thing, though he knew it had been just a week or two past.

He led them out of the law house, and they were joined as they went by Arla and Ella Saine. Serhan said something to Ella about her brother that made her smile, so Sam supposed Corban had survived the adventure. They walked in readiness, but Serhan’s presence lent Sam a kind of confidence that he had not known before. He guessed that this was how a general felt at the head of a great army, knowing that power was at his disposal. He also guessed that it was why, from time to time, such generals were defeated.

They came to the house, and Serhan stopped outside and looked it up and down.

“You see something?” Sam asked.

Serhan looked grim, his mouth set in a hard line, his face in a frown.

“It stinks of magic,” he said. “But nothing I know.” Sam didn’t know what that meant.

They entered, and finally the mage lord was shown to the door of the empty room. He stood before the open door and stared, his head cocked on one side as though listening. Perhaps it was true that he could see magic, or even hear it. They all waited, standing behind him in the marble hallway. Gilan looked like he was going to say something, but Sam raised a hand to stop him, and the big man subsided again. Arla found a seat and sat down.

Time passed. Every now and then Serhan would mutter something under his breath, or move his hand as if tracing the outline of a hidden shape, but the room remained empty, the spell unbroken. Gilan wedged himself into a corner and closed his eyes. After a while he began to snore quietly and Diara nudged him with a toe to keep him quiet.

Sam himself was on the point of finding somewhere to rest when Serhan suddenly turned from the door and closed his eyes.

“I think I have it,” he said.

“Can’t you just use the sword to break the spell?” Sam asked. “Like you did with me.”

“I could, yes, but the things in this room are… elsewhere. I will not try to explain it to you now, but if I used Soul Eater the spell would break and they would remain where they are. That would not be so bad, but there are children here – two, I think. They would not live long where they are if the magic is undone.”

The voices, Sam remembered. He was glad that it had not been an illusion.

“Can you save them?” Ella asked.

“I think so. There is a key, a physical thing. I suppose that Delantic had it on his person when he died, so we cannot retrieve it, but I think I can pick the lock. It is a pretty piece of work, the spell.”

“They have some talent, then?” Sam asked.

“I do not think this is their work,” Serhan said. “It is an old thing, a high and ancient magic from before the Faer Karan. I would guess they found the key and learned how to use it. Such things were common once.” Serhan sat down on the floor in the doorway. “It will take a little time,” he said.

*

It would have been interesting to find the key. The magic used here was subtle, and far above what he had used to create Soul Eater. The sword was really a very simple device by comparison, a hammer if you like when laid beside the complicated machinery of the vanishing room. The spell that made the room bore none of the characteristics of the pain magic that had trapped Sam Hekman.

The house was a different story. It was wrapped in agony. He would see it destroyed before this affair was over.

Cal could have learned a lot from the key, but the lock itself was an education. He had become aware of an infinity of other worlds from reading Corderan’s book. Corderan had been the greatest of the ancient mages destroyed by the Faer Karan, and it was his book, more than anything, that had raised Cal up to what he was. It had been a revelation, containing as much theory as practical magic.

When he had banished the Faer Karan he had sent them to other places, to those other worlds, and that is where the contents of this room now resided, yet not completely. It was as though they had been tied up in a bag and lowered into a well. As long as the bag and the string existed they could be retrieved, but break either and they would be lost for ever. The lock itself was like a maze, but a simple one. It was designed to confound the blind, but Cal could see. As far as he knew he was unique in this. Yet here there were lives at stake, and perhaps more importantly his reputation.