undying legion 01 - unbound man (19 page)

“That’s not for you to decide, is it? There are four of us with a say, and —”

“Let him speak, Druce,” Mara said. She turned to Arandras. “Why?”

“I can’t sell it. Not right now. I need it.” The words ran out, and he shook his head.

Mara’s voice was like steel. “Why?”

“Ahhh. All right.” Arandras covered his head with his hands and tried to gather his thoughts. “Fine. I — um. Well, I used to be married. Really.” He looked from face to face, trying to impress upon them the weight of his words. “Tereisa… she was killed. Murdered. And that urn is going to lead me to the man who did it.”

“The hells it will,” Druce said. “Do you truly expect us to believe —”

“
Don’t.
” Arandras glared across the table. “I really don’t care what you believe. I
know.
”

Something in his words seemed to reach them. They stared, or looked away: Jensine speechless, Druce uncertain, Mara impossible to read.

Eventually Druce broke the silence. “I see you believe that,” he said, his tone subdued. “But this changes nothing. The urn belongs to all of us. I say we sell it. Jensine?”

Jensine hesitated. “Sell,” she whispered. “I’m sorry, Arandras, truly I am. But we have to sell it. You see that, don’t you?”

“Mara?”

Mara stared at the table, her hand clenched around her mug. When she spoke, her voice was thick. “No sell.”

“What?” Druce stared at her, shocked. “What do you mean, no?”

Mara snapped around. “Nobody asked you to explain your vote. I don’t have to explain mine.” She turned back to the others. “Two votes to sell, two against. We do nothing.”

“No, this is bullshit!” Druce was on his feet in an instant, fury contorting his features. “This is not what happens! We find things, we sell them. That’s all! We do not just
decide
to hang on to the biggest find we’ve ever had!”

“You called for the vote,” Arandras muttered.

“Shut up!” Druce leaned over the table, his finger practically touching Arandras’s face. “One fourth of that thing is mine. You want to keep it? Buy my share. Four gold bars, minus change. Same again for Jensine, while you’re at it.”

“Don’t be absurd. I don’t have that kind of money.”

“Absurd, is it? You’re keeping exactly
that kind of money
from us! You arrogant bastard.”

“Listen, Druce, if you need silver, I can tide you over until —”

“I don’t want an advance, and I don’t need your charity!” Druce dug into his coinpurse and flung a handful of coppers at Arandras, striking him in the face and chest. “There’s your loan back. I don’t owe you anything.” He paused, breathing hard, and shook his head. “I thought you were different. Did you know that? I thought, here’s a man who’s straight. Here’s a man who respects you enough to tell it true. But you don’t respect anyone, do you, Arandras? Not even your friends. Not even yourself. Well, fuck you.”

He stalked away, jouncing the table as he departed. Arandras rubbed his stinging cheek and forehead, copper coins clinking as they fell to his lap.

“So, what, that’s it?” Jensine said, and Arandras looked up. “Druce is right, Arandras. This isn’t what we do. You can’t just change the rules like that.”

“We voted,” Arandras said.

“And when have we ever had to vote about anything before? No, this is wrong.”

“I’ll make it up to you. Just give me time.”

“No. This is over.” Jensine pushed herself to her feet. “You owe me, Arandras, and you owe Druce, and that’s going to eat at you until you make it right. But even then…” She shrugged. “How could I trust you again?”

Arandras bowed his head as Jensine followed Druce out of the bar. He felt wrung out, as if he had been running for his life.
I have no choice. Can’t you see?
But such thoughts were useless now.
This is over,
Jensine had said, and she was right. It had been over the moment Mara found the urn.

“Well done,” Mara said, and it took him a long moment to recognise the sarcasm. She considered him, head tilted as though trying to discern his thoughts. He looked away, reluctant to meet her eyes.

“Are you going to leave as well?” he asked, and found he did not know what answer he was hoping to hear.

Slowly, Mara shook her head. “My lover died, too,” she said, so softly that he almost couldn’t hear.

Still he could not meet her eyes. “Who killed him?”

She shrugged. “Me, in the end. But he was dead long before.” Her hand found his arm. “I know what it is to have questions that need answers. I’ll help you, if you want it.”

“Thank you,” Arandras said. He swallowed, searching for more words but finding none. “Thank you.”

They sat there for a time, neither moving. Arandras’s tears were few, and soon ran into his beard, and he did not think Mara saw them.

•

Two days of prowling the compound yielded Eilwen frustratingly little information about Kieffe. Once, she spotted him through the high bathhouse window as he crossed the compound, but by the time she emerged he was gone. Another time she passed him on the staircase and doubled back, trailing him to a featureless door on the first floor. She was not bold enough to follow him in, and when she came back that night and tried the door, she found it locked.

At breakfast on the second morning she sought out Pel, asking him about Kieffe’s past assignments, and what had brought him to Anstice. But Pel merely shook his head in disappointment and suggested that if she wished to become better acquainted with Kieffe then she might, perhaps, consider a conversation with the man himself. Then, blinking ponderously as if in surprised realisation, Pel leaned in and offered to arrange an introduction, forcing Eilwen to backtrack hastily and change the subject.

But if Kieffe was difficult to locate, Master Havilah was impossible. Eilwen saw no sign of him at all, nor any indication of activity in his suite, leading her to suspect that he had left the compound entirely. Where he had gone, and when he would be back, she did not know.

Ufeus could tell her nothing about either Havilah’s whereabouts or Kieffe’s assignments, past or present. Nor did he know anything about the room on the first floor. “My interests begin at the compound gate,” he told her stiffly. “The details of Guild administration are not my concern. Perhaps you should try Ged.”

Perhaps I should.
With nothing else to go on, and with Havilah absent, the locked room seemed her only lead. Ged, the house steward, could at least tell her which master the room was allotted to. If it turned out to be Laris, it would at least be confirmation of sorts that Kieffe was indeed a trader. And if not…

Maybe I’ve got it wrong. Maybe Kieffe is something else entirely.
She recalled Caralange’s glare when she walked in on him and Laris in Havilah’s office.
A sorcerer, perhaps.

The steward’s chambers occupied three adjoining suites on the second floor, the intermediate walls of which had been partially removed to form one long, twisting room. Eilwen halted by the vacant assistant’s desk, looking about for someone to speak to. Crates and boxes filled the winding space, some clinging to the walls in irregular stacks, others clustered together in rough islands on the floor. Most were closed, but a few bared their contents to her gaze: plates and utensils, lamp oil and wicks, pens and ink. A faint hum rose from the far end of the room, and Eilwen stood on tiptoes, craning her neck to see past the piled goods.

“Hello?” she called. “Is someone there?”

The humming stopped. “Back here. Try not to bump anything.”

Eilwen stepped around the first of the piles, making her way past boxes of sealing wax and scent bottles to the rear of the room where a small office was partitioned off from the rest by a light wooden screen. Ged sat at one end of a narrow table, a collection of papers before him, eyeglasses perched on the end of his nose. Eilwen cleared her throat and the steward waved her in without looking up.

“Eilwen,” he said, running his finger down a column of numbers and pausing to scratch a note beside one of them. “How fares the clock? Running smoothly, I hope?”

“Yes, thank you.” Eilwen glanced around, looking for somewhere to sit, but every available surface was covered with papers. “I’d almost think it sorcery if it weren’t for the clicking. Remarkable craftsmanship.”

“Good, good.” Ged’s finger reached the bottom of one column, moved to the top of the next. “And what can I do for you today?”

“Just answer a question, I hope,” Eilwen said. “There’s a room on the first floor. Could you tell me who has use of it?”

“Ah. I think so. A moment, if you please…”

The moment stretched to a minute, then two. Eilwen folded her arms, her gaze falling on a wide, shallow cabinet on the wall behind the steward’s head, its doors fastened with a pair of heavy locks. The key cupboard. Even as the thought formed in her mind, she pushed it away. Havilah’s instructions had been plain.
Better to lose him than tip him off.
Letting herself into Kieffe’s room was out of the question.

But what if it wasn’t his room? Perhaps it was a meeting chamber, or a storeroom, or —

Ged pushed back his chair with a screech and turned to a set of calfskin-bound folios at the end of the table. He selected one and laid it open, revealing a plan of the building.

“First floor, yes?”

“That’s right. North side, facing the garden. Third door from the eastern corner.”

“Hmm.” He turned the page, scanning the rows of slanting text. “Here, this is it,” he said, tapping an entry with a lined forefinger. “This room is designated for the use of Spymaster Havilah.”

“What?” Eilwen leaned over to read the words for herself. “Are you sure that’s the right room? First floor, I said.”

“You did, yes,” Ged said tartly. “This is the room, and it is allocated to the Spymaster’s department.”

“His department,” Eilwen repeated, trying to think. What in the hells was going on?
Gods, please let Havilah not be playing both sides.
The key cabinet hung from the opposite wall, silent and inviting.
If he’s not, going in there would be madness. But if he is…

The steward closed up the folio and returned it to its place. “Is there anything else?”

Eilwen smiled at his back. “Do you happen to have a spare key for that room? There’s an… anomaly I need to resolve.”

“Master Havilah will have a key. No doubt he can tell you what lies within.”

“No doubt,” Eilwen said as Ged turned back, peering at her over the rims of his eyeglasses. “Unfortunately, Master Havilah is away at present. Guild business, you understand.” Ged offered no reaction, and Eilwen plunged ahead. “But I am his appointed deputy, which makes me the department’s ranking officer in his absence, at least where matters in Anstice are concerned. And since we are, in fact, in Anstice…”

He frowned.
Come on,
Eilwen thought, willing her smile not to slip.
Just give me the key.

“Spymaster Havilah is away, you say.” The steward rubbed his chin. “Perhaps you should wait until he returns.”

“This can’t wait, I’m afraid,” Eilwen said, careful not to plead. Any hint of desperation would only undermine her authority.

“And where is Master Havilah?”

“I can’t tell you that,” Eilwen said. “I’m sorry.”

“Can’t wait, can’t tell.” Ged eyed her speculatively. “You are like him, aren’t you? I did not see it before, why he chose you. Now, I see.”

Eilwen smiled and said nothing.

Ged inclined his head, an amused glint in his eye, and turned to the key cabinet.

•

Eilwen left the steward’s chambers with the key in her hand and questions filling her mind. If the room belonged to Havilah, why had he never mentioned it? Was Kieffe one of Havilah’s agents outside of Anstice? But if so, what was he doing in the city? Or maybe he had nothing to do with Havilah. Maybe someone else had simply used Havilah’s name to procure the room. But who would do such a thing, and why would they bother?

Had Ufeus been holding out on her? Had Havilah?

She found herself on the first floor, having descended the stairs without thought, her steps leading her around the corner to the northern corridor. Beech panelling lined the walls on both sides, the light tones broken only by doorways, lamp sconces, and some small plaster statues of the Coridon era. Eilwen slowed as she neared the third door. No-one else was in sight. The door was unmarked, giving no hint of whether it led to a private suite or a chamber with some other function. She slowed further, straining her ears for any sound of activity within.

Someone rounded the far corner and began striding toward her. Eilwen accelerated at once, the key clenched tight in her sweaty palm, heart thudding against her ribs. A flash of something pale caught her eye — ashen hair? — and she glanced up; but no, it was just Laris in another of her high-collared jackets, this one somewhere between the colours of cream and pearl. The Trademaster offered her a warm smile as she approached.

“Eilwen. I was hoping to see you again.”

“Trad — Laris,” Eilwen said, hoping her face didn’t look as flushed as it felt. “You’re well, I hope.”

“Very well, thank you,” Laris said. “And how is Havilah treating you?”

Good question.
“Fine,” Eilwen said. She cast about for something more to say, but nothing came to mind.

Laris’s brow furrowed. “Is something wrong?”

“No.” Eilwen took a deep breath. “Everything’s fine.”

“Ah. Good.” A maid emerged into the corridor a few doors down, and Laris drew Eilwen aside to let her pass. “My door is always open to you, Eilwen,” the Trademaster resumed, her voice low. “I hope you know that.”

Eilwen blinked. “Uh, thank you. That’s very kind.”

“I mean it,” Laris said, her hand lingering on Eilwen’s arm. “Havilah’s very good at what he does, but he has a fondness for tossing people out of the nest to see who’ll learn to fly on the way down.” She shrugged wryly. “It’s his way, I suppose. But if you need help finding your wings, come talk to me.”

“Thank you,” Eilwen said again. “I’ll keep that in mind.”