The Smoke-Scented Girl (15 page)

Evon stared. “Piercy. You promised—”

“I said I’d be at my most persuasive. It
seems my most persuasive wasn’t good enough to overcome the fact
that the spell is under no one’s control. You must realize how
they’d feel about that.”

“What do you mean, take charge of me?”
Kerensa asked. She’d clasped her hands in her lap and her knuckles
were showing white.

Piercy sighed. “They weren’t forthcoming with
the details. I’m afraid they don’t understand the danger of your
being forced to miss your rendezvous, so to speak. Evon, you’ll
have to convince them. They know I know almost nothing about magic;
they think this is a simple matter of national security.”

“Should we run?” Evon asked.

Piercy blanched. “Dear fellow, aside from
that being ultimately pointless because the government has
virtually unlimited resources to bring to bear on finding us, it
would be treason. I had the feeling, in talking to them, that the
war is not going well at all and certain factions within the
government have built up this spell as our salvation. How they
intend to use it is anyone’s guess, but as I said, they don’t seem
to understand how the spell works at all. I’ve been instructed to
stay here and wait for whomever they send to...I hope not relieve
me, but it might come to that.”

“Piercy, this is disastrous.”

“I know, dear fellow, but you have four days
to unravel that spell before they arrive.”

“And suppose Kerensa is forced to move on
before then?”

“Then I will have to remain behind.” Piercy
looked grim. “I cannot seem to be disregarding orders, even for
such a justification as that. I just hope it doesn’t come to that,
because I doubt they’ll accept any excuse for Kerensa not being
here when they arrive.”

“I can’t wait on them,” Kerensa said.

“No one’s telling you to,” Evon said. “If the
urge does come upon you, we’ll move ahead and I’ll keep Piercy
apprised of our progress and location. But it’s not going to
happen.”

“How do you know?”

“I don’t. I’m being unreasonably optimistic
because I’m filled with dread. If your next words are to tell me
that Odelia will be here in the next fifteen minutes, I may begin
screaming.”

“No, I’ve seen no sign of Odelia or her
companions,” Piercy said. “No suspicious lurkers, no one asking
after us. But it might not be a bad idea to blanket this inn in
whatever protective magic you have at your command.”

“It’s a large inn, Piercy, I’m not sure how
far my reserves will extend. But I’ll try.”

Piercy jabbed a finger at one of the
spell-ribbons. “They quite match your dress, Kerensa, which is
lovely. You must have excellent taste, because Lore is practically
color-blind.”

“I am not. Just because I don’t think an
afternoon spent choosing a neckcloth to match a new waistcoat is
enjoyable.”

“I didn’t think of the color when I chose
it,” Kerensa said, eyeing a spell-ribbon that hung in front of her
left eye. “I wonder if they influenced me at all?”

“More likely it was that shop assistant,”
Evon said absently, going back to his notes. “I’ve been building a
lexicon of the new runes. It’s really astonishing. Whoever built
the spell didn’t use runes the way we do at all. He, or she,
treated the runes as pictograms, representing words instead of
symbols. It’s a narrow distinction, but an important one. I think
these—” he traced the line of a ribbon with the tip of his
pencil—“are sentences. If I can work out what the other words are,
I can read the spell as easily as if it were a book.”

“That’s unusual, is it?” Kerensa said. “And
please don’t poke me in the eye.”

“Sorry. Yes, extremely unusual. Everything
would take forever if we cast spells this way.
Desini
cucurri
is so much faster than saying ‘Blue porcelain vase next
to the brown table, stop falling now,’ for example. But our spells
are also far less complex than this one. The whole concept is
groundbreaking. It opens up a whole new paradigm for spell-casting.
This alone could keep me busy for the next ten years.”

“Your enthusiasm is, as always, terrifying to
behold,” Piercy said, “and it’s dinnertime. Kerensa, if your
stomach could produce a ladylike growl at this point, it would do
wonders toward helping me convince Lore that he needs to eat just
like the rest of us.”

“I can’t growl on command,” Kerensa said,
“but I can say ‘dear brother, I’m starving, could we please eat
now?’”

Evon scowled. “I’ve made the biggest
breakthrough in magical theory this century, and you two mock me.
You’ll be sorry when you read my memoirs.”

“I would tremble at that threat, dear fellow,
but I know you’ll be too distracted to remember to write them.”

Evon scribbled through a word, pressing hard
enough that the tip of his pencil snapped and flew off to
plink
against the window. He swore. Behind him, Kerensa
said, “I had no idea gentlemen used that kind of language. Should I
pretend I didn’t understand?”

“Gentlemen can be just as vulgar as anyone
else, given the right provocation, and right now I am extremely
provoked. I don’t have enough information to interpret this rune,
and without it I can’t interpret this entire branch. I haven’t made
any progress in the last half hour. I think we should take a
rest.”

Kerensa put her book down. “I’d like to
stretch,” she admitted. “And this book is interesting, but I wish
it had more original material.”

Evon dismissed
epiria
and sat down on
his bed, flexing his stiff fingers. He’d been working for three and
a half hours and had discovered the meaning of fifteen runes, not
his most productive session, but at least he was making progress,
or had been. He had the nagging feeling that he was going about
this the longest possible way, that if he could just find the right
perspective it would all fall into place. But he couldn’t find that
perspective, so he kept slogging away while Kerensa read or stared
into the distance or, on one occasion, took a nap. Four days, and
Piercy expected his superiors to appear at any moment. Evon had
copied out five hundred unique runes and he understood barely a
hundred of them. Fragments of runic sentences swam before his eyes
when he lay down to sleep:
and make it the
, or
can
find
, or other useless phrases. Nothing that would unlock the
secrets of the spell; nothing that might free Kerensa from its
grasp.

“I’ll have Piercy get you another,” he said.
“This must be so boring for you.”

“You keep saying that,” Kerensa said, looking
out the window. “My life’s been exciting enough, these last months.
Boring is nice. Boring with a book to read is nicer.”

Evon flopped back to lie on the bed and put
his hands behind his head. “So it’s at least a good book.”

“The author believes that Alvor will return
soon to free us from tyranny, though she doesn’t say whose tyranny
we need to be freed from. Aside from that, she tells some good
stories.”

“So you’re not, in Piercy’s phrase, an
Alvorian conspiracist.”

“That’s a good phrase. No, I think Alvor and
his friends were real people, but not immortal or anything like
that. I’m interested in working out what’s true and what isn’t in
all these legends. Like this one, about how Dania gained her
powers. It says she challenged a magician called the Wooden Man for
his secrets, though I’m not sure why she would need to.”

“A thousand years ago magicians were
secretive about their spells. They would surround the command words
with gibberish to prevent rivals from learning their spells, or
cast them from a distance so the words couldn’t be overheard.
Magicians would sometimes challenge each other to contests in which
they each might put up a spell as a stake.”

“Oh. Well, in this story, Dania had no
magical powers and she challenged the Wooden Man for all of his
spells. He was supposed to be actually made of wood and so never
got tired or needed to eat or piss or anything like that. But I
think it’s more reasonable to assume that a magician of that power
probably had spells that would give him those abilities. Am I
right?”

Evon considered. “I don’t know of any spells
that exist now that would, for example, remove the need to sleep.
But I could probably create one.”

“Yes. So what I think is that Dania
challenged a powerful magician who was capable of altering his
body—”

“Wait just a second.” Evon bounced up and
went to the dressing table, covered with sheets of his notes. “I
know I—that’s it. This rune means ‘alter.’ The spell altered your
body so you couldn’t be damaged by normal fire. It must be why you
look so....” He waved his hand, holding the sheet of paper, in a
circle in her direction.

“Why I look so what?”

“Um. So...smooth?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

He had the feeling he’d walked into a trap.
“You must know,” he said, “the way your skin looks like it doesn’t
have pores...?”

She stared at him as if he’d lost his mind.
Evon reached out and took her hand, used his other hand to push her
sleeve up to her elbow, then rolled back his own. “Obviously your
skin would be smoother than mine in any case, but—”

She snatched her hand out of his and held her
forearm up to her eyes. Then she dashed to the mirror above the
dressing table and leaned in close, scattering some of Evon’s
notes. “I look
awful
,” she moaned. “I look like I’m wearing
a flesh mask. I can’t believe I’ve been walking around, thinking at
least I look like a normal person, when all this time—”

“It really isn’t that bad,” Evon said. “No
one’s commented on it before, have they? Not even when you were
able to settle down for a while? You’re really very pretty, you
know.”

“Am I?” she said absently, prodding at her
cheeks as if she thought the mask might come off.

The words
You are the most beautiful woman
I’ve ever seen
froze behind Evon’s lips. He just nodded.
“Piercy thinks so too. And when the spell is gone, you’ll look like
yourself again.”

“I feel so shallow, but now that I’ve seen
this, removing that spell seems more urgent,” Kerensa said,
stepping away from the mirror and grinning ruefully at Evon. She
went back to the window and leaned on the sill. “Not really, but
you know what I mean.”

“I do. And I don’t think it’s shallow to want
your life back, even if just in that small way.”

“I want it back in every way, but I’m afraid
to hope. I—” She stiffened. “Evon,” she said, her voice sounding
strained, “Piercy’s coming. And he’s not alone.”

Evon came to join her at the window. He was
just in time to see Piercy pass out of sight below, headed toward
the inn door. Behind him were five or six people, all wearing the
plain black cloaks and wide-brimmed hats Evon associated with Home
Defense. Their heads were constantly moving, as if assessing
possible threats from any direction. One looked up and seemed to
gaze directly at them; Evon resisted the urge to duck out of
sight.

“Sit down,” he told Kerensa, and cast
epiria
but not
desini cucurri
, so when moments later
Piercy tapped at the door and then opened it, Kerensa sat demurely
in the center of the room, wreathed in flying blue spell-ribbons
that glowed with a light that burned the eyes of anyone who looked
at it too long.

Evon looked up from a page of notes, pencil
in hand. “Piercy,” he said. “And these must be your colleagues.”
His hand holding the pencil was shaking a little; he gripped the
pencil tightly and willed the tremor to vanish.

“Evon, may I make known to you Mr. Garaid
Terantis,” Piercy said, inclining his head in the stranger’s
direction. “Mr. Terantis, Evon Lorantis.”

Mr. Terantis nodded at Evon, more curtly.
“You’re too young,” he said. He was a broad, bulky man with a thick
mustache that covered most of his mouth and neat black hair parted
in the center and swept back over his ears. Under his cloak, he
wore a black frock coat with a white shirtfront and black waistcoat
from which hung a silver watch chain. His feet were enormous and
seemed to take up most of the space between himself and Evon, vast
black shoes whose shine was somewhat diminished by the filthy slush
that covered the toes. He looked like a prosperous undertaker, and
Evon was suddenly reminded of Odelia and her funereal garb. Behind
him stood a man and a woman, both wearing black cloaks, the woman
dressed in trousers like the man.

“I have more than enough experience to handle
this situation,” Evon replied, biting back a harsher response.

Mr. Terantis glanced over the room, saw
Kerensa, and in an instant his self-possession deserted him. “What
the
hell
is that?” he shouted.

“That, Mr. Terantis, is the spell Mr.
Faranter and I were searching for,” Evon said calmly, though his
stomach was in knots and his heart pounded as if trying to break
free of his ribcage. “You can see it’s not like other spells.
It—”

“What the hell do I know about other spells?
Mr. Faranter, this is not what we were led to expect. We’ll have to
take her into custody immediately. Who knows what damage she might
do?”

Kerensa’s knuckles went white. Evon said,
“She’s no danger to you, sir. The spell is dormant now and Miss
Haylter has no conscious control over it, so she could not harm
anyone even if she were minded to do so. Which I assure you she is
not.”

“That’s exactly what I’m afraid of,” Mr.
Terantis said. He stepped closer to Kerensa, though not within
arm’s reach of the spell-ribbons, and walked around her, examining
her like a mare he thought he might buy. “She’s got no control over
it, so who knows what it might do?”

“Mr. Terantis, please stop talking about me
as if I wasn’t here,” Kerensa said in a quiet but firm voice. “My
name is Kerensa Haylter.”